The Garden prepared.

  In the sunless depths, Amon felt the change. The tar did not just pool; it evolved. The mist whispered of threats that required more than the soft embrace of sleep. It demanded iron, and it demanded stone.

  Caregivers shifted. The simple, amorphous blobs of tar that had suffocated Goblins began to harden. They drew minerals from the rock, weaving granite and limestone into their bodies until they stood as bipedal sentinels. Their left arms thickened into heavy, door-sized shields of fused slate. Their right hands elongated, crystallizing into jagged spears of obsidian.?

  Rock-Tars.

  They lined the tunnel, a silent phalanx of earth and shadow, waiting.

  They come.

  The warning had been brief, carried on the scent of fear from the retreating Kobolds. A day passed. Then, the silence broke.

  Scratching. Hissing. The heavy, rhythmic thud of armored feet.

  The Scales arrived.

  Hundreds of them poured into the corridor, filling the space with the smell of sulfur and heated metal. They were not the small, skittish miners Amon had seen before. These were Draights.?

  They were towering brutes, double the height of a man, their bodies encased in natural armor of thick, overlapping scales. Muscles coiled beneath the plating like steel cables. In Thicketon, Amon had seen them only from a distance, enforcers who collected tribute, crushed bandits, and kept the peace with a brutality that felt like justice.

  Now, they looked at the mist with hate.

  "Burn it!" a commander roared, his voice a guttural bark.

  The front line dropped to their knees. Jaws unhinged. Throats glowed with the inner light of a furnace.

  Whoosh.

  Fire erupted.

  It wasn't a torch; it was a wall of red-hot devastation. The flames slammed into the mist, hissing like angry serpents. For the first time, Amon felt the fog recoil. The moisture evaporated, the tar bubbling and retreating from the sheer thermal violence.

  Hold.

  The Rock-Tars advanced.

  They didn't charge; they marched. Shields raised, they walked into the inferno. The stone of their bodies glowed cherry-red, but the tar beneath held. They crashed into the Draight line with the force of a landslide.

  Spears flashed. Obsidian punched through scales, finding the soft flesh beneath.

  The Draights roared. Claws raked across the stone shields, leaving deep gouges. Fire poured from their mouths at point-blank range, turning the tunnel into a kiln.

  Amon watched through the eyes of a Rock-Tar. He felt the heat, the searing pain as the outer layer of his construct melted. But he also felt the strength.

  The construct dropped its spear. Its rocky hand shot out, grabbing a Draight by the throat. The lizard struggled, claws scrabbling for purchase, but the grip was absolute.

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  The Rock-Tar didn't strike. It fed.

  It shoved a fistful of raw tar down the Draight’s open gullet. The black sludge poured into the creature, suffocating the fire in its belly. The roaring flame died, replaced by a choked gurgle.

  Preserve.

  The Draight went limp, its eyes rolling back as the tar flooded its system. The Rock-Tar dragged the unconscious body back into the mist, passing it to the waiting amorphous blobs behind the line.

  The battle became a grinder.

  Fire against stone. Heat against cold.

  Draights surged forward, desperate to save their kin. They bathed the Rock-Tars in continuous flame, melting the stone armor, boiling the tar. But for every construct that fell, two more stepped up.

  Amon focused inward.

  The Core in his chest spun, a dynamo of violet light. He pulled on it, hard.

  More.

  He—along with many other Souls being syphoned—pushed a wave of Mana into the mist. It surged forward, heavy and suffocating. It wasn't just fog anymore; it was a physical weight. It wrapped around the Draights, blinding them, clogging their nostrils, cooling the fire in their throats.

  Confusion rippled through the Scale ranks. They swung wildly, hitting empty air or their own comrades. The tar-tendrils lashed out from the floor, grabbing ankles, pulling the warriors down into the dark.

  Seventy.

  Amon counted them as they were dragged away. Seventy souls saved, seventy lives preserved in the dream.

  The Draights broke.

  Realizing the futility, the rear guard unleashed a final, desperate wall of fire to cover their retreat. They backed away, dragging their wounded, leaving the tunnel to the smoke and the silence.

  The Garden did not pursue.

  Enough.

  Amon watched them go.

  He shifted his consciousness to the captured Draights. They lay in rows deep within the mist, encased in cocoons of hardened tar. They slept peacefully, their chests rising and falling in a slow, unnatural rhythm, with each breath growing shallower, death closing, along with Preservation nearing.

  These were the defenders of the realm. The invincible warriors of his childhood. Now, they were just... fuel. Batteries for the Garden.

  Why?

  The question gnawed at him. Belugmah offered no answer, only a vague sense of necessity. Souls were power, and power was safety.

  But safety from what?

  Amon’s mind drifted, touching the edges of the knowledge the mist held. He thought of the Dragons. Not just Lavia, but the others. The Blues, the Greens, the Golds.

  Guardians.

  The realization hit him. Dragons weren't just tyrants, they were akin to antibodies. They existed to fight off infections from the void, to keep the realm pure from the touch of other gods. They were the immune system of the world.?

  And now, the immune system was failing.

  The invaders—the Tharnells—knew this. They brought guns that could kill gods. They brought machines that could harvest magic, and Souls.

  They know.

  The Dragons knew the Veil was torn. They felt the draft in the house. But they didn't know what was coming through the door. They were fighting a war with claws and fire against an enemy that fought with mathematics and industry.

  Amon felt small.

  He was a ghost in a shell, hiding in a hole, hoarding souls like a miser while the world burned above him.

  Is this it? he wondered. Is this all we do? Wait for the end?

  Belugmah’s presence brushed against his mind. It was vast, cold, and indifferent.

  We endure.

  That was it. The Garden didn't care about the war. It didn't care about the realm. It cared about persistence. If the Tharnells won, the Garden would wait. If the Dragons won, the Garden would wait.

  It would always be there.

  But Amon… Amon cared. This was his home, and these were his people.

  He looked down at the fox curled against his chest in the dark.

  "I will not just endure," he whispered to the silence. "I will reclaim."

  He closed his eyes, settling back into the earth. He would grow, he would learn. And when the time was right, he would rise, and be this realm’s savior.