CHAPTER 749: THE ELDER OF RETURN (2)

"Good evening, Elder," Mikhailis said, polite as a library.

It’s a strange thing to watch a face realize it has tripped. The young man’s expression micro‑stuttered, then flowed almost perfectly back into place. Almost.

"Reset rune under the supply crate," Mikhailis continued as if they had a schedule. "Designed to wipe the ledger when a tired hand presses the wrong place. Log gone, blame the outsider. Echo‑tag on my strap. Test capture within easy reach. The coached recruit. Looped handwriting. Access to rosters. Decay line that walks clockwise along authorizations only Elders have."

He spread his hands a little. "You didn’t find the dungeon. You didn’t even build it first. You weakened the ring, then pulled the dungeon through and called it the culprit."

The young face didn’t flinch. It tilted its head, almost admiring. Then, for a half blink, age bled through—creases at the eyes, a weight in the cheeks—and was gone.

"You carry a soul not woven here," the not‑young voice said softly. "Not from this world. Your scent is wrong. Grafted. Undesirable."

Mikhailis looked down at his sleeve, as if seeing if he’d spilled soup on it. "Disgust is a weak metric," he said. "Show math."

Two references to a hidden elf imperium in Silvarion Thalor’s quieter stacks, Rodion whispered. Not extinct—concealed. They called outside clans ’abandoned stock.’

The young face smiled like a knife put back in a drawer. "The clan here is farm wood. Useful. Not a throne. We collapse this pocket. The ring will flow where it is needed—into works you can’t understand. The dungeon was a test and a story. Your commander’s little placards got in the way."

"Placards save lives," Mikhailis said mildly. "Boring miracles. My favorite kind."

"Your favorite kind will die here." A hand flicked. The basin shuddered.

Corpse‑vines uncoiled like bad hair. Bone sand lifted and shaped itself into hungry fingers. The air learned a taste of iron.

Mikhailis didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. Shadows moved where no one not named Elowen would ever see them. The Riftborne Necrolord draped a veil over the grove—not a blanket, a starve. Commands sent to vines found no mouths to bite on. The first curse came in mean and fast; the Slimeweave Ant took it, absorbed the lash with a wobble, and snapped a glue whip that turned grasping hands into dumb lumps.

Wind hissed once—the Tempestrike Drakeant strafed low, its blade shearing bone fingers off at the knuckles. The Skullborne Ravager slid along the edge like a wolf that had learned to be patient, then struck at the necromancer’s blind angles, forcing the young‑old face to split attention. The Crymber Ant pulsed heat, then cold, cracking ward plates with the unfair physics of a thing that can be summer and winter in a heartbeat.

Necro‑ants choked the basin with dead‑air knots, lowering its bite the way sand lowers a flame’s pride.

Rodion executing disruption. Scrambling rhythm capture. Muting glamour feedback. Seeding three false ’you are here’ echoes.

The young face laughed, delighted and cruel. It split once, twice—after‑images quick as hand darts. One image sang a thin song meant for the Drakeant alone; its wings faltered a fraction before pride corrected. The other image stepped into a shadow fold that smelled like drowning in mercury and snapped it at the Necrolord like a trap.

The grove learned new faces—familiar ones. Two juniors from the terrace. A nurse with ink‑stained nails. They were only illusions, but they had voices and the voices cried out at the right pitch to make a person stupid.

Mikhailis’s fingers ached with the urge to smash the trick until it admitted it was a trick. He didn’t. Rules are better than rage.

Prime‑step. One pebble per five breaths. No applause for his own moves. He kept the mockery of the grove from turning into a rhythm it could eat.

Rodion: equilibrium. The ring feeds him. We will not win fast enough inside this pocket without breaking the grove—and the seclusion might collapse in exciting and fatal ways.

"Witness‑sap," Mikhailis said, reaching for the vial. He cracked it with a twist of his thumb and smeared a line over the nearest stone. The smell was clean and green and old.

"Did you place the rot before the dungeon?" he asked the stone, not the man.

The sap gleamed in the hollow, a neat bead in the groove he’d smeared across. It did not cloud. It didn’t even think about clouding. It lay there like a calm eye that had already decided the answer.

Truth affirmed.

Mikhailis let a single nod happen, small enough not to start a rhythm. The cold bit his cheeks and made the inside of his nose feel thin. Good. The bowl agrees with the bored old laws. He tied the knot first, then dragged the dungeon through it. Not a leak. A plot.

"Then this isn’t a duel," he said, lifting his gaze to the young face in the grove. He kept his tone very even, the way Elowen liked reports to sound. "It’s an arrest warrant I’ll serve later."

For a breath the glamour sagged. The mask slipped the way damp cloth slips off a nail. The Elder looked through: a tired man with care under the wrinkles, a softness earned from a thousand small kindnesses—and then that bone-thin something blinked behind the eyes, and kindness left like a guest who remembered another appointment. The smile that followed learned the shape of hunger as if it were a new vowel.

"You don’t belong," it said.

The words were simple, but they struck like a hand on a drum skin. The ring agreed. He felt the agreement rise from the ground into his calves first, a tightening in his muscles as though the hill clenched its teeth. The stones around the basin took the note and sang it back, not sound, but pressure—hairs on his arms lifting, the feeling you get when lightning is nearby but not generous.

A ripple ran through the grove. Not across the surface—through it. The air went tight as a stretched string. He tasted metal. The hairs behind his ears prickled.

Banishment keyed to foreign soul-scents. Countermeasures engaged. I am biasing the exit vector. I cannot stop it cleanly in home terrain.

"Do your worst," Mikhailis said, making his voice light at the edges, as if he were already bored. His teeth did not agree; they had decided the wind was too cold for jokes. He glanced at the young-old thing once, almost teasing. "But give me the scenic route."

Done. If we die, your last words will be petty.

He almost laughed and didn’t risk it. Petty lasts longer than poetry, he thought, because jokes had always been his good luck charm. He let his weight move a finger-width to the outside edges of his boots, ready for the wrong kind of motion.

The world chose wrong.

It yanked sideways, not back, not forward—sideways, as if the path he stood on had been folded like paper and he was now meant to slip between sheets. The grove ran away from him with stage-speed, curtains pulled too fast at the end of a play. The dark became busy, a rush of not-colors. Air roared loud, then louder, then decided to swallow itself. His stomach flipped. His balance lied. He had the silly thought that he had become a beetle under a child’s palm.

Dark slapped him once. Then it changed its mind and gave him back the outline of the world in a single hard piece.

Gravel exploded under his boots. The toe of his left boot found purchase one breath sooner than the heel. He skidded—one leg braking, the other thinking about continuing. Pebbles grated complaints under his soles. His hand shot for the nearest thing—a thorn shrub hunched against the cold. It bit him with three tiny knives, quick and honest, the kind of pain that says you still have skin. He gripped anyway. The thorns held. Friendship, but with conditions.

He stopped with his toes tasting the edge. His body told him in that deep, bone way that one inch more meant empty air.

He let all his muscles argue, then win. He stood.

Night opened below the cliff. The valley was a bowl of cold. Pine wind walked it with measured steps. The stars were hard, as if they were cut from thin metal and nailed into a dark ceiling. Far off, under a layer of dragging fog, a soft light pooled and moved—city-light, not fire, not moon. Civilization pretending to be shy. Somewhere, a river lied. He could hear it, all smooth whisper, trying to sell the story that it was calm and reasonable. Rivers lie like that. He didn’t hold it against them.

Online. Latency spiked; recovering. I have a live tether.

He blinked against the starlight. "Hive?" His voice came out low, as if he didn’t want to wake the cliff.

Pinging.