The desert night stretched across the valley as Wisper moved steadily toward the mountains. Behind him the open land rolled endlessly beneath the stars, a wide expanse of dry earth and scattered brush where predators now hunted freely. The wind whispered across the valley floor, carrying dust and the faint scent of blood from the creatures he had killed earlier in the evening.

  Out there the land was exposed and unforgiving. A man could see danger coming from miles away, but that same openness meant there was nowhere to hide when something stronger appeared. That kind of terrain was good for hunting. It was terrible for surviving.

  The thought had settled firmly in his mind as he walked. The System had changed the world, but it had not erased the simple realities of survival. Even with the strange transformation the Revenant body had forced upon him, he still needed water and shelter. Fighting monsters might earn Essence, but exhaustion and exposure could kill just as easily as claws and teeth.

  Wisper glanced toward the dark shape of the mountains rising ahead of him. The slopes climbed sharply from the valley floor, forming a jagged barrier against the night sky. Somewhere within those ridges a narrow canyon cut deep into the stone, a place he had explored years ago during long hikes through the mountains.

  He had always remembered it for one simple reason.

  Water.

  The valley might be dry and open, but the mountains were different. These ranges were sky islands—isolated pockets of higher elevation where cooler temperatures and trapped moisture allowed entirely different ecosystems to grow. Down in the valley there was desert scrub and brittle grass.

  Up there, there were trees.

  Real trees.

  The memory of the canyon came back to him clearly as he walked. The place had been narrow and shaded, its floor covered with leaf litter from the large oak trees that grew along the stream running through the rock. The canyon walls trapped cool air and moisture, allowing plants to grow there that had no business surviving in the desert below.

  If the System had reset the world, that canyon would still have the same advantages it always had.

  Water.

  Shade.

  And natural walls that limited how many directions something could attack from.

  Wisper adjusted his path slightly and continued climbing toward the foothills.

  The terrain began changing gradually as he approached the base of the mountains. The loose sand and gravel of the valley floor gave way to rougher ground where stone pushed up through the soil. Larger rock formations appeared here, scattered across the slopes like broken teeth.

  The climb grew steeper as he moved higher. His boots crunched softly against gravel and broken stone while the wind grew cooler with every step. The air smelled different as well, carrying faint hints of vegetation that had been absent on the valley floor.

  The first trees appeared shortly after that.

  At first they were small twisted shapes clinging stubbornly to the rocky slopes. Their trunks were thin and crooked from years of fighting the dry wind that swept up from the valley below. Branches stretched outward in uneven directions, their leaves sparse and dark against the starlit sky.

  But as Wisper continued climbing, the vegetation began to change.

  The scattered trees thickened gradually into something closer to woodland. The ground beneath his boots softened where patches of leaf litter gathered between the stones, and the air lost some of the dry bite it had carried across the valley floor. A faint scent of living plants drifted through the night, replacing the dust and brittle grass that had dominated the lower terrain.

  The trees themselves grew larger as he climbed higher.

  What had begun as twisted desert growth slowly transformed into the broad spreading forms of mountain oaks. Their trunks were thicker here, the bark rough and deeply grooved from decades of slow growth. Their branches stretched wider, forming loose arches that tangled together above the rocky slopes.

  The canyon entrance finally appeared ahead of him.

  Two tall stone walls rose from the mountainside like the edges of a massive split in the earth. Even beneath the faint starlight Wisper could see darker streaks along the rock where water had once flowed down the stone during heavy rains. Time and erosion had carved the opening deeper into the mountain, leaving a narrow passage that cut sharply inward.

  The canyon looked exactly the way he remembered it.

  Which meant the advantages he had counted on were probably still there.

  Wisper stepped between the walls.

  The change in temperature was immediate. The wind that had followed him across the valley vanished almost completely as the canyon walls blocked the open air behind him. The sound of the desert faded as well, replaced by a quiet stillness that settled over the narrow passage.

  The ground beneath his boots changed too. Loose gravel gave way to darker soil where years of fallen leaves had gathered and broken down into soft earth. The canyon floor sloped gently inward, guiding him deeper between the towering walls of stone.

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  Massive oak trees grew along the canyon floor.

  Their trunks were thick and twisted with age, some of them so wide that Wisper could not have wrapped his arms completely around them. Their branches stretched high overhead, forming a loose canopy that filtered the moonlight into scattered patches across the ground.

  The shadows beneath those branches felt different from the open darkness of the valley.

  Cooler.

  Deeper.

  The scent of damp earth lingered in the air, accompanied by the faint smell of moss and leaf litter that had collected across the canyon floor. Somewhere deeper within the passage the quiet sound of moving water drifted through the trees.

  The sky islands had always been strange that way.

  Dry desert below.

  Cool woodland above.

  The change had always felt abrupt when climbing into the mountains, as if someone had drawn a boundary line across the landscape and decided that two entirely different worlds should exist only a few thousand feet apart.

  Wisper followed the sound of water as it grew gradually louder.

  The narrow ribbon of the stream eventually came into view, winding through the rocks along the center of the canyon floor. Moonlight filtered through the oak branches overhead, reflecting faintly off the moving surface as the current slipped quietly between moss-darkened stones.

  He crouched beside the stream and dipped his hands into the water before drinking.

  The liquid was cold and clear, far better than anything he had expected to find after the chaos of the System’s arrival. It tasted clean, untouched by the dryness that had dominated the valley below.

  For several moments he simply remained there, letting the cool water settle in his stomach while he listened to the quiet trickle of the stream moving across the stones.

  The canyon felt calmer than the valley.

  The stone walls blocked the wind, and the trees softened the darkness with their spreading branches. The entire place carried the quiet atmosphere of a sheltered pocket hidden deep within the mountains.

  But it did not feel empty.

  Places with water never were.

  Wisper rose slowly and continued deeper into the canyon.

  The trees thickened as the passage widened slightly ahead of him. Their roots twisted across the ground in thick ridges that forced him to step carefully through the dim woodland. Fallen leaves muffled the sound of his boots while the canyon walls rose steeply on both sides, blocking most of the moonlight.

  The deeper he moved into the canyon, the darker the ground became beneath the trees.

  And that was when he noticed the ground.

  Large patches of soil had been torn open across a shallow clearing ahead, leaving uneven mounds of loose earth scattered between the thick roots of the oak trees. The damage stretched across most of the basin floor, the ground churned and overturned as though something enormous had been digging there for days.

  At first glance the disturbance resembled the work of animals searching for buried food.

  But the holes were far too large.

  And far too deep.

  Wisper stepped closer and crouched beside one of the open pits. The disturbed soil was dark and damp beneath the surface where the cooler mountain air preserved moisture longer than the valley floor ever could. Loose chunks of earth crumbled beneath his fingers as he brushed them aside, exposing layers of freshly turned dirt beneath.

  Something had been burrowing here repeatedly.

  The sides of the pit were not smooth the way a shovel would leave them. Instead the walls were jagged, gouged with narrow scratches and deep punctures where something sharp had forced its way upward through the ground.

  Not digging down.

  Coming up.

  Wisper studied the clearing more carefully now. The disturbed patches formed an irregular pattern across the basin floor, each one roughly the size of a small animal burrow but far deeper than any natural hole should have been. Some of the mounds of displaced soil were nearly two feet high, the loose dirt piled carelessly between exposed roots and stones.

  Whatever lived here had not bothered hiding its nest.

  It had simply pushed the mountain aside.

  Then the earth moved.

  A mound of loose soil several yards away shifted slightly before collapsing inward with a dull crunch. The ground bulged upward again a moment later, the dirt splitting apart as something beneath it forced its way toward the surface.

  Wisper rose slowly from his crouch.

  The ground erupted.

  A jagged spike of dark chitin burst through the soil as the creature forced its way out of the earth. Dirt sprayed outward as long segmented limbs clawed through the surface, pulling the insectoid body into the open air with a scraping sound that echoed faintly against the canyon walls.

  The creature resembled a massive ant roughly the size of a large dog.

  Its body was divided into thick armored segments that glinted faintly beneath the moonlight filtering through the oak branches above. The exoskeleton was dark and glossy, nearly black in color, while the jointed legs ended in sharp hooked claws built for digging through soil and stone.

  Large mandibles snapped open and shut at the front of its head, the serrated edges grinding together with a dry clicking sound.

  The creature lifted its head slightly as its antennae began sweeping slowly through the air.

  Another mound of earth erupted nearby.

  Then another.

  Soil burst outward as more of the creatures clawed their way to the surface. Their bodies emerged from different points across the clearing, each insect pulling itself free of the ground before rising on six jointed legs.

  Within seconds the quiet basin beneath the oak trees was crawling with movement.

  Wisper counted them quickly.

  One.

  Three.

  Five.

  More dirt shifted behind the others as fresh mounds of soil trembled beneath the surface.

  The creatures’ antennae twitched as they turned toward him, their movements jerky but purposeful as they oriented themselves toward the disturbance in their nest.

  Wisper slowly straightened to his full height.

  “Ants,” he murmured quietly.

  The largest of the insects released a sharp clicking sound that echoed faintly through the canyon. The noise carried across the stone walls like a signal, and the other creatures reacted instantly. Their heads turned toward him in unison, antennae locking onto his position as their mandibles snapped open in agitation.

  A den.

  The realization settled immediately.

  If this was their nest, then there would be far more beneath the ground than the few that had already surfaced. The disturbed soil around the clearing suggested a tunnel network spread beneath the basin floor, dozens of burrows connecting chambers carved deep within the mountain.

  Killing the ones above ground might not end the problem.

  But it would certainly start one.

  Wisper stepped slowly toward the deep shadow cast by one of the massive oak trunks. The tree’s thick branches blocked most of the moonlight in that corner of the clearing, leaving a pocket of darkness pooled against the rough bark.

  The shade wrapped around him almost instinctively.

  The Shade trait responded immediately, the darkness thickening around his form as if it recognized him.

  The ants advanced across the torn earth, their clawed legs crunching through the loose soil as they spread out across the clearing. The largest of them moved first, its antennae angled toward Wisper while the others followed slightly behind.

  The distance between them closed quickly.

  Ten yards.

  Eight.

  Wisper adjusted his grip on the sword.

  The blade felt solid and balanced in his hand, far more reliable than the knife he had been using earlier. The leather grip tightened beneath his fingers as he shifted his stance slightly, placing one foot behind the other for stability.

  He exhaled slowly.

  “Let’s see what the System thinks about insects.”

  The largest ant lunged forward.

  And the fight began.