A heavy silence. Alive.

  As if the stone itself were holding its breath with them.

  Then, above…

  A scraping sound.

  Light.

  Like the sound of a hand brushing against stone, just above their heads.

  Althéa inhaled slowly.

  Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, unblinking.

  The sound above them—that slow, irregular sliding—kept carving into the silence.

  At last, she whispered, barely audible:

  "We need to think."

  "It can’t see. That’s our advantage."

  Lucanis turned his head toward her, his brow slick with sweat.

  "His eyes are dead, yes… but his ears aren’t."

  Althéa nodded.

  Her hands were trembling slightly, but her voice remained steady.

  Cold.

  Measured.

  "Then we do what we do with blind predators."

  "We deceive it."

  "We draw the noise somewhere else."

  The silence stretched again.

  The sound from the ceiling had stopped, but it still lingered, hanging over them.

  Kael finally broke the quiet.

  His voice, low but steady, cut through the tension.

  "Wait."

  Lucanis, tense, froze.

  Althéa slowly turned her head toward him.

  Kael nodded toward the cracked bottle still lying beside the corpse.

  "Did you notice?"

  "When I threw the bottle, the thing didn’t move an inch."

  "Not a sound. Not a reflex."

  Lucanis frowned.

  "And?"

  "And that means it doesn’t care about inert noises," Kael replied.

  He spoke calmly, as if stating the obvious.

  "The lycaons—the ones we saw before—they didn’t react to metal, or stones."

  "What they followed was us."

  "The rhythm. The breathing. Human sounds."

  "Our footsteps. Our hearts. Our fear."

  A shiver ran through Lucanis.

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  Althéa, meanwhile, kept her gaze fixed, absorbing every word.

  Kael went on, lower:

  "If we want to fool it, we need to make human noise."

  "Not a stone. Not a blade."

  "A step."

  "A breath."

  "Something alive."

  Lucanis turned toward him, almost outraged.

  "You want us to walk, is that it?"

  "To deliberately give ourselves away?!"

  Kael shrugged one shoulder, half ironic.

  "Not us."

  "Someone."

  An icy silence followed the word.

  It echoed, heavy, through the narrow corridor.

  Lucanis opened his mouth to protest, but Althéa raised a hand.

  She was still staring at Kael, unblinking.

  "What he’s saying makes sense," she admitted in a low voice.

  "The sound of a step… regular, human, would draw its attention."

  "But… it would have to be done at the right moment."

  "Too early, it comes down. Too late, it cuts off our exit."

  Kael slowly nodded.

  "Exactly."

  "And that’s where it gets complicated."

  Lucanis clenched his teeth.

  "Why?"

  Kael shot him a sideways look—the kind that stings.

  "Because you’re too loud."

  "You, Lucanis, breathe like a bellows and walk like you’re carrying half the world."

  "And you, Althéa…"

  He hesitated for a fraction of a second before adding, a little softer:

  "You control everything—except your breathing when you’re afraid."

  She stared at him, offended, but didn’t answer.

  He was right.

  Kael went on, more serious:

  "If we’re going to try bait, it has to be precise."

  "One single noise. Not too loud. Not too early."

  "And above all… we can’t miss."

  His tone darkened.

  "Because if the creature realizes we’re playing with it, it will come down."

  "And then there’s no plan. No strategy."

  "Just blood on the sand."

  Lucanis ran a hand over the back of his neck, nervous.

  "And how exactly do you plan to do that?"

  "You’re thinking of going yourself?"

  Kael looked back up at the ceiling.

  The black mass seemed to have shifted again, just barely.

  As if it were breathing in time with their conversation.

  "Yeah," he murmured.

  "If someone has to distract it, it might as well be the one it hasn’t sensed yet."

  He glanced at Althéa, a dull smile on his lips.

  "And besides… I think it likes me."

  Kael looked at them without blinking, as if what he was about to say were the most natural thing in the world.

  "Listen to me carefully," he said, slowly. "I go back into the chamber alone, just inside the entrance. I take one step—just one—at exactly the right moment. A human step. Alive. It will turn its head and move toward the sound."

  He gestured toward the corridor.

  "You two stay perfectly still. One on each side, in the shadows. You’re my fixed decoys."

  Lucanis frowned, his voice unsteady.

  "And then what? It follows us, we run, we scream, we trap it?"

  Kael shook his head, almost smiling sadly.

  "No. If it follows the step, it will press itself against the corridor entrance. In that confined space, that’s when you move—slightly. You pin yourselves to the walls and make no sound after that. It won’t be able to turn freely. It’s big—we saw that. Too big to move easily in there. It will be vulnerable."

  He paused. His hand brushed the heel of his boot, as if anchoring himself to the ground.

  "Then you neutralize it. Not to kill it needlessly. To make it unable to stand back up."

  Althéa raised an eyebrow, icy.

  "You mean… immobilize it?"

  Kael met her gaze, calm, as if they were talking about snapping a branch.

  "Yes. Deprive it of its ability to stand."

  Lucanis swallowed hard.

  "How do you…?" he started, but didn’t dare finish.

  Kael answered in a measured, almost detached voice:

  "By severing its tendons. Here, at the base of the leg. It won’t be able to push. It will fall. We control it without giving it the advantage."

  Silence. The room seemed to close in around those words.

  Althéa went pale in a way rarely seen on her usually impassive face. Her fingers tightened around the shaft of her torch.

  "You’re talking like it’s a surgical procedure," she said, her voice cut by indignation. "That’s barbaric."

  Kael narrowed his eyes, without shame or anger—just an almost clinical calm.

  "It’s survival," he replied. "We don’t have the luxury of principles here. There’s a monster on the ceiling. And a disemboweled body right next to us. If we let the thing decide, it kills us."

  He turned his head slightly, avoiding looking at them directly.

  "I’m ready to do it. But if you refuse… say it. We’ll try something else."

  Lucanis took a deep breath, jaw clenched. Courage and revulsion warred in his eyes.

  "It’s… brilliant on paper," he finally said, his voice trying to convince itself. "But I… I’ve never done that."

  Althéa studied him, then fixed her gaze on Kael. In her eyes, there was something beyond cold hatred: a hard calculation, the shadow of a decision.

  "Very well," she said at last. "If we do this, we do it in coordination. No improvisation. I won’t be the one who lets a comrade fall because of stupidity."

  Kael nodded. His calm didn’t waver by an inch. He almost seemed relieved that the decision had been made.

  "We do it cleanly," he said. "Quickly. You draw its attention. I guide it. You close the circle. No useless heroics. No sloppy movements. After that, we improvise."

  For one last second, they looked at each other—three silhouettes under the trembling torchlight, fine sand at their feet, the corpse lying like a warning.

  Then, without another word, Kael shifted slightly to take position at the entrance. His face remained pale, almost absent. The absolute calm inhabiting him laid their nerves bare: there was no room for hesitation now.