Chapter 361: Ridge Breakers

Givan’s third bite tore free of the shield-arm in a spray of red and something darker.

"GAHH—"

The bitten Giant went down hard, already shaking, gold starting at the edges of his eyes.

Kane didn’t watch the turn finish.

He stepped over the falling body and put himself in Givan’s path.

"Kessa—clear left! Griselda—keep the ones at the lip blind!"

Mjoldr came up in a short arc meant to take the remaining shoulder clean.

Givan twisted with a speed that didn’t belong to broken knees and missing arms.

The axe head scored ridge-dirt and old wrap instead of joint. The eyes fixed on Kane with the flat interest of a tool that had found a harder surface than the last.

"You first, then," Kane said.

"Fine."

He didn’t open full Rage.

Kane stepped in where the Giants had been trying to hold distance, inside the bite radius, and made the fight about structure instead of fear.

Givan lunged mouth-first.

Kane dropped his weight, let the jaws pass over his shoulder, and drove Mjoldr’s spike up under the chin-line into the dark behind the tongue.

Black fluid poured.

The body convulsed.

The arms, one stump, one ruined, still tried to cage him.

Kane wrenched the spike free, turned with the motion, and took the other knee the way Kessa had started.

Bone and wrong tissue gave.

Givan folded and still smiled, still reached, still tried to climb Kane’s frame the way it had climbed the cut.

Kane put a boot on its chest, pinned the thrashing mass to the stone, and brought the axe down in a full two-handed cut through the neck.

Slash.

The head rolled.

The body jerked twice and stopped.

"Givan’s done!" Kane shouted.

"Anything with gold in the eyes—end it! Don’t wait!"

The lower-tier fighter from the night path finished the first bitten Giant with a hammer-blow that had no triumph in it.

Another escort did the same for the shield-arm victim before the turn could stand up in a familiar body.

The Stone-Mother’s voice cut across the cut without breaking:

"You heard him! Wrong eyes are not our blood! Hold the lip—nothing else comes over!"

Climbers still came.

Half-formed shapes, ridge-dirt, yellow stares.

Kessa met the left flank in a blur of gauntlets and snarls, breaking joints whether the bodies cared or not, kicking ruined things back into the drop.

Griselda’s flares turned faces into white pain and broken aim.

She didn’t waste power on the already-falling.

Kane moved along the line with Mjoldr, efficient kills: neck, skull, the hinge where spine met head, saving deeper Rage for a problem that hadn’t shown itself yet.

Thora held the path-choke behind them, compact axe ready, bracelet still strobing against her ankle.

One climber that slipped Kessa’s line learned that in a single, ugly exchange.

Thora put it down and stayed standing through pure refusal.

Firlia worked the edge of the fight with the medical kit open, marking living from lost, dragging the merely wounded back from the bite-line when hands allowed.

Misha kept the elven commanders tight at the hall-ward path, no one running, no one becoming a second problem in the cottage lane.

The wave thinned.

A last shape hauled itself over the lip.

Three hammers and one axe stroke put it back into the dark.

The tremor underfoot eased one degree.

The waterfall’s slap against stone became only water again.

Silence landed in pieces, breathing, a low groan, the drip of fluid that was not spray.

The Stone-Mother walked the line of bodies once.

Where gold still clung to a dying eye, she ended it herself.

When she turned back to Kane, her hammer-head was dark, and her face was the same heavier tiredness, only sharper.

"Count," she said.

A runner began the living and the lost aloud. Giants dead on the stone.

Giants ended by their own after the bite.

Two elven commanders with minor wounds, cuts, not turns.

Household: bruised, bloodied, intact.

Kessa had a split lip and a grin that was mostly adrenaline. Griselda’s wings trembled once and folded. Firlia’s hands were steady on the kit. Misha’s brief was still in her coat, forgotten and safe.

Thora’s bracelet had not gone quiet.

It ticked a slower, deeper warning, something larger still moving under the ridge, not at the lip.

Kane noticed.

So did she.

"I held a choke. Do not tell me I am sitting the next hole while the ridge is still climbing."

"You held a choke with ribs that were already breaking." Kane kept his voice even, not a public dressing-down.

"You are not sidelined. You are assigned to the lower tier and the hall doors with the commanders. If the cut breaks again while we are under stone, you are the reason the children’s ledges stay clean. That is nothing."

Thora’s jaw worked.

The anger did not vanish. It found a place to sit that was not pure mutiny.

"If the bracelet spikes the way it did for Givan, you pull back to a depth I can reach."

"If the bracelet spikes that way, we are already in the wrong argument," Kane said. "Agreed on the signal. Not agreed on you in the rope line."

Kessa spat black-tinged spit onto the stone.

"Primary. Now. That thing climbed out of the same dark you were going to walk into at dusk. Waiting is how we get a second Givan with better timing."

Griselda shook her head once.

"Secondary first. Controlled comparison. If we feed the primary more bodies without knowing whether the family matches what we already carry, we are guessing with people who just watched their own dead smile. I want the smaller wound under ward before anyone names the heart."

The Stone-Mother had listened without crossing the household’s private edges. She spoke when the runner finished the count.

"Dusk is cancelled."

No one pretended surprise.

"The secondary shaft is no longer a trial for southern favours," she said.

"It is the nearest bleeding hole we can still reach without stepping into Root-Binder’s grave on a full stomach of panic. You wanted proof. The ridge has offered it in our own faces. We stabilise this cut. We burn what must be burned."

Everyone listened.

"Then you move on the secondary mouth with an escort of my choosing, fighters who have already paid, not fools looking for a story. The injured land-walker stays on the lower tier. The box stays shut until my warders and your winged one agree the mouth is as controlled as it will get."

Kane inclined his head.

"Secondary as soon as the cut holds. Escort of your choosing. Case closed until the mouth, Thora on hall and tier defence with the elven commanders. We seal what we can. After that, we talk about the primary and the southern line with numbers instead of hope."