4.4 LIGHT

As Juna and Ste Etienne advance through the caves, a gleaming, silver-shelled predator silently seizes Shrouded escorts. The creatures move slowly yet strike decisively, and the Shrouded fail to perceive them. Juna uses calibrated three-beat radio pulses to Pied Piper the surviving escorts away, steering the pod and ball drone along alternate routes mapped to avoid more ambushes.

Persistent silver predators shadow them, turning their slow encroachment into a mounting threat. After a perilous detour past a sheer breach into a vaster cavern, the team reaches open air on the far side of the mountains, crossing Shroud’s equator into a colder, outer hemisphere. They enter a vast “ice-feather” biome: a three-dimensional lattice of ice grown around hair-thin living filaments.

Believing this region less lively, they are proven wrong when missiles flash from beyond their lights, obliterating a Shrouded. They spot attackers: globular beings operating openwork exoskeletal frames that bulge and spit boluses which catalyze into explosively freezing ice, shredding Shrouded on impact. The escort surges into evasive action and flees; Juna and Ste drive the pod after them through the crystalline maze.

The spitters’ accurate fire hammers the group. A strike cripples the pod, and a leg is torn away, sending it skidding and tumbling down-slope. Lights and systems fail as the last visible Shrouded dodges clear of the wreck’s path. In darkness and pain, Juna confirms Ste is alive and reroutes power to bring pharma online, dosing painkillers and stimulants.

With partial diagnostics, they free a seized knee on a remaining leg and accept the pod’s precarious condition. They restore some lamps and cameras, preparing to face whatever waits beyond the feeble circle of light, with most of their Shrouded escort gone and a vast, hostile half-world still ahead.