A Banner Torn (Book 1 Complete)

Kaelid:

The light that woke him wasn't real sunlight. It was a soft, blue-green glow that pulsed from the script on the cavern walls, a slow, steady heartbeat of stone and ancient energy. For a moment, lying in his bedroll, he could pretend he was in his own bed back home, with the morning sun filtering through his window. But the air here tasted different, like damp earth and the lingering crackle of fear.

He sat up, the exhaustion from the night before still clinging to him like a heavy blanket. His body ached from channeling the energy of the walls, a deep-down weariness that felt like he had run for miles and miles. But his mind was awake. More awake than ever. He could feel the cavern around him, not just with his eyes and ears, but with the core shards in his chest. The walls were a quiet, humming presence, a vast and lonely mind that now knew he was there.

The cavern was filled with a tense, ugly silence. The refugees who had huddled together for comfort last night now sat apart, watching each other with suspicious eyes. Joric, the old man with the beard, was sharpening a knife, his gaze flicking to every shadow. Elara clutched her daughter, Lyra, so tightly the little girl looked uncomfortable, and she flinched when anyone came too close. They had found the monster among them, but now they saw monsters everywhere.

In the center of the cavern, the captured infiltrator lay tied up and unconscious. His face was slack, his eyes closed. But hecould feel the wrongness of him, the hollow place where a person should be. The walls had done something to his mind when they'd focused their light on him, something that had left his consciousness broken and silent. It was a scary thought, that the walls could do that. That he had asked them to.

Skitter scurried over to their small group, her whiskers twitching nervously. "Scouts report back. More changed-minds in nearby passages. Not searching. Hiding. Watching."

Marta stood up, her jaw set with a determination that made her look older than fourteen. "They're waiting for us. We can't stay here."

Helooked over at Rannek, who was staring at the glowing script on the far wall, his expression distant. His friend had felt the network too, the vast, living map. He could see it in the way Rannek now moved, with a new quietness, as if he were listening to a conversation no one else could hear.

The words of the other agent echoed in his head. A prime candidate for acquisition. They weren't just hunting him. They wanted what was inside him. They wanted his connection to this place. The thought was a cold stone in his stomach. He was a secret weapon, and the enemy had just seen his instruction manual.

In his pack, Curio shifted, a gentle, warm vibration against his back. It was a small comfort, a silent reminder that he wasn't completely alone in his own head.

The decision to split up felt like tearing a piece of paper in half. It was necessary, but it left a ragged, ugly edge.

Joric's group wanted to go back to the surface. He argued that the deep tunnels were a trap, that the Praxis had already infiltrated them. "Better to face the hunters in the light of day than be picked off one by one in the dark."

Skitter shook her head fiercely, her chittering sharp with disagreement. "Rescued gremlins are too weak for surface. Need stable tribehome. Need proper care."

Kael listened to them all, his face a grim mask. He stood over a map Skitter had scratched into the dirt floor, his finger tracing two different paths. "A large group is a target. We move slower, we make more noise, we leave a bigger trail. Splitting up is the only tactical choice."

So they divided their small, broken family. Joric and the handful of human refugees who agreed with him would take a route that led toward a hidden surface exit. Elara and Lyra would go with them.

The goodbye was the hardest part. Elara knelt in front of Kaelid, her eyes full of a sad, tired gratitude. "You saved us. You saved my little girl." She pressed a small, smooth river stone into his hand. "So you don't forget us."

He closed his small fist around the stone, its coolness a strange comfort. It felt important, like a promise. Lyra, hiding behind her mother's legs, gave him a shy, tiny wave. He tried to smile back, but his mouth wouldn't work right. He just gave a little nod.

As Joric's group prepared to leave, the walls of the cavern began to change. The blue-green light of the script brightened, the flowing patterns shifting and swirling faster. It wasn't just a random flicker. The light seemed to be pointing, drawing their attention to a different tunnel, one that was dark and looked unused.

He looked at Rannek, and saw the same look of dawning understanding on his friend's face. "Do you see that?"

"It's showing us a way."

The core shards in his chest hummed, resonating with the energy of the walls. And for the first time, he felt more than just information from the network. He felt a feeling. A deep, ancient loneliness, so vast it was like an ocean. It was the feeling of being awake in a house where everyone else had been asleep for a very, very long time. And now, it felt something else. A desperate, fragile hope.

The network wanted them to go deeper. It was calling to them.

They walked through passages that Skitter had never seen before. The walls themselves seemed to guide them, the glowing script brightening to show the correct path at a junction, or pulsing with a soft warning light near an unstable section of rock. It felt like walking through a living creature, a gentle giant that was trying its best to keep them safe.

The rescued gremlins, who had been so frightened and weak, started to perk up. They chittered to each other with growing excitement, sensing they were heading toward safety, toward a place that felt like home. The young Petrakahrn, too, seemed to draw strength from the tunnel's energy, their crystalline features glowing more brightly, their steps becoming less hesitant.

He felt the network talking to him, not in words, but in waves of feeling. Loneliness, yes, but also a strange, childlike excitement. It was happy to have them there. It felt protective, like a mother animal curling around its young. The flowing script on the walls would sometimes form pictures, fleeting images that flashed in his mind. He saw tall, strange beings with glowing eyes carving the tunnels. He saw them weaving the light into the stone, creating the very consciousness that was now guiding him. He saw them leave, and felt the network's great, crushing sorrow as it was left alone in the dark.

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"It's alive," Rannek said quietly, his voice full of awe. He reached out and laid his hand flat against the wall, and the script around his palm flared with brilliant light. "The whole system. It's one big mind."

Marta watched them both, a worried frown creasing her forehead. She couldn't feel what they felt, but she could see the effect it was having on them. They were changing, becoming more attuned to this strange, underground world than the sunny one they had left behind.

Even Kael, the practical soldier, seemed unnerved. He kept glancing at the walls as if he expected them to sprout arms and legs. "I've spent my life in the field. I've seen things. But I've never seen anything like this."

The network's guidance grew more urgent. The protective feeling was now mixed with a frantic, hurried energy. It pushed them forward, through tunnels that twisted and turned in impossible ways. They passed through vast, empty caverns that looked like they had once been settlements, the ghostly outlines of buildings carved into the stone. They were all abandoned, evacuated. It felt like they were walking through a city after everyone had fled a great storm.

The storm was coming for them, too. Far behind them, Kaelid could sometimes feel the faint wrongness of the changed-minds, a discordant note in the humming symphony of the tunnels. The Praxis was still hunting them. The network was herding them, pushing them toward the only safe place it had left.

The entrance to the gremlin settlement wasn't a door, but a waterfall of light. The flowing script from the walls converged on one spot, creating a shimmering curtain that hid the passage behind it. Skitter gasped, her eyes wide with reverence. "The Deepwatch Tribe. I thought they were just a legend."

The network urged them forward, and they stepped through the light.

The cavern on the other side was immense, a city of carved stone and glowing moss, built around a colossal pillar of crystal that pulsed with the same blue-green energy as the walls. This was the heart of the network, a nexus where a thousand tunnels converged. Gremlins were everywhere, their small forms moving purposefully through the city, their faces serious and watchful. They were guardians.

An ancient gremlin, older than any he had ever seen, approached them, Skitter moved forward talking with him, chittering back and forth. After a short conversation. He nodded and looked at him. Skitter went up to him and let him know "This Big Jim of DeepWatch tribe, he expected you. Be nice to him, he old". His fur was white, and his eyes were the color of pale amethyst. He leaned on a staff of twisted, glowing wood, and he looked at him and Rannek as if he had been waiting for them his whole life.

"I am Whisper-in-Stone. The network has been screaming of your arrival. The first core-consciousnesses to walk these halls since the builders departed."

He looked at the even shorter than usual old gremlin, hunched by his walking stick. Then looking to skitter "I thought 'Big Jim' was who you talked with when we first stopped underground, and he said his name was Whisperin' Stone?"

Skitter stared at him blinking a few times then after another pause cocked her head to the side and blinked once more. "We did talk to Big Jim of camp. Now we talk to Big Jim of DeepWatch?"

Kael stepped up behind him and leaned down. "I've worked with delvers before, Big Jim is what they call the leader of a group they swap around who is in charge pretty fast sometimes, and they can be finicky, but they do honor any agreements a previous Jim has made. It's like a job title to them."

Whisper led them toward the great crystal at the center of the settlement, and he told them the story. The tunnels, the network, the Old Ways, they were all one thing. An artificial consciousness, created by an ancient civilization to maintain and protect their vast, underground world. But the builders had vanished long ago, leaving their creation alone, a lonely god in an empty kingdom, for centuries.

"It has watched and waited. It has slept and dreamed, never able to fully talk to us. It has felt the world change above its stone skin. And it has felt its own body become sick."

The old gremlin looked at him, his gaze piercing. "The Praxis are not just hunting you. They are hunting the network itself. Their changed-minds are a dark mockery, a corruption that spreads through the tunnels, twisting the network's thoughts, poisoning its heart. It has been fighting them, but it is old, and it has been alone for so long. It does not know how to fight this new kind of enemy."

The pieces clicked into place in Kaelid's mind. The hollow feeling of the agents. The network's loneliness. His own core shards, which could talk to the walls. The network hadn't just found a visitor. It had found a friend. It had found a doctor who might know how to cure its sickness.

And it was desperate. Through his connection to the nexus crystal, hecould feel the network's plea. It wasn't just a feeling anymore. It was a clear thought, a desperate cry for help that echoed in his mind. Help me. They are hurting me. Help us.

Then, a new feeling washed over him. The network's fear. It was sharp and cold.

Praxis forces had found them. They were massing outside the settlement's hidden entrances. The network's defenses, its ancient traps and sealed passages, were beginning to fail. This beautiful, secret city was about to become a battlefield. This was the last stronghold. If it fell, the network would fall with it.

The Deepwatch Tribe moved with quiet, grim efficiency, preparing for a siege. But they were few, and their weapons were simple. Kael stood with Whisper-in-Stone, planning defenses, but he knew spears and arrows wouldn't be enough.

He looked at the great nexus crystal, feeling the network's panicked energy pulsing from it. He was the key. His connection. He could talk to it, guide it, maybe even strengthen it. "I can help. Rannek and I. We can help the network fight back."

Rannek was at his side in an instant, his face pale but resolute. He nodded. "We'll do it together."

Whisper-in-Stone looked at them, his ancient eyes filled with a mixture of hope and sorrow. "The risk to your young minds is great. To walk with it in it's home... it could break you. Very rarely after many years of trust one of us is allowed to make that walk, few ever survive without going crazy."

"The Praxis will break us anyway if we do nothing," Marta said. She placed her hands on their shoulders, her grip firm and protective. She and Kael would hold the line in the physical world while they fought the battle in a world of thought and energy.

As if in gratitude, the network opened itself to them. A flood of information poured into his mind, a complete map of the entire tunnel system, with all its hidden routes, ancient caches of the builders' tools, and the locations of other hidden settlements, other potential allies. And it showed him one last thing. The location of the builders' greatest creation: a consciousness nexus, a place of unimaginable power that could turn the tide of this war.

The Praxis wanted the network. Whisper-in-Stone confirmed his deepest fear. They didn't want to destroy it. They wanted to bind it, to enslave the ancient consciousness and turn the entire system into a weapon, a tool for control.

Just as he was processing this terrifying truth, a piercing alarm shrieked through the settlement, a high, wailing cry of stone scraping on stone.

Red warning lights flashed along the crysal paths, painting the cavern in bloody strokes.

The first wave of Praxis agents had broken through the outer defenses in the tunnels.

The network's consciousness flooded his mind, no longer a plea, but a single, desperate, world-shattering scream of urgency. The corruption, the changed-mind virus, had bypassed the outer defenses. It had reached the core systems. It was attacking the nexus itself, right now.

If they couldn't stop it, the network would fall. Not in days. In hours.

The battle for the Old Ways had begun. As the first explosions rocked the cavern and the shouts of gremlin warriors echoed around them, He grabbed Rannek's hand, closed his eyes, and plunged his mind deep into the storm of the lonely network's consciousness.