CHAPTER 440: 440: A MOUNTAIN EATS AND DISAPPEARS

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A few hours later...

They brought the dead bodies home in lines that did not tangle.

Shadeclaw handled the slope — ropes over rollers, sleds lashed with cross-cord, three drones to a haul. Silvershadow took the ledges — silent feet, traffic in one direction, orders in the other. Armor came off first: plates stacked by size, helms nested, blades in bundles tied twice. Lirien stood at the forge arch with soot on her cheek and counted without a slate, eyes flicking, lips still.

"Steel to the left," she said. "Leather to the vats. Rope on pegs. No piles that fall on toes."

Two thousand bodies made a long, quiet city on stone.

Kai walked the length once with the spear upside down, butt knocking the floor to keep the lines honest. He did not make a speech to the dead. He only said to the living, "We will use what they brought to our door. Strip what can be forged. Return the rest to our strength."

He turned to the ten cohorts of drones and raised two fingers.

"Eat," he said. "Cohorts by turns. No pushing. No waste."

The first line moved. It was not savage; it was deliberate. Drone after drone knelt, sank mandibles into the heart-seat with a clean bite, and drank. Essence shivered up bodies the way heat comes up from a kiln — visible if you know how to watch. The drones’ eyes brightened. Their stances changed, little shifts that told old instincts had just learned new tricks.

Kai watched with a soldier’s eye for what changed.

One drone finished a body from Skall’s spade team and stood with his palms turned outward, as if feeling tremors through rope. He stamped the floor twice, then nodded — learning how the ground speaks.

Another finished a net-caster and didn’t wipe his mouth; he re-tied the strip that bound his forearm in three quick knots, the last a clever double-loop. When he threw an empty practice net, it bellied full and fell exactly where his eyes had said it would.

A third drone rose from a shield-woman’s breastbone with a new way of standing: shoulder forward, elbow tucked, forearm angled to roof another with his own body. He didn’t know the words "Shield wedge," but his bones remembered.

Runners took on Oru’s slide — hips loose, feet whispering. Two drones who had eaten officers went still and then began tying thin cords to their wrists with different knots: pull, slide, snap — silent signals fitted to new hands.

One drone finished eating a healer / medic’s body and surprised himself by laying his fingers along a wounded comrade’s ribs in exactly the right place to brace them while cloth went on. He bandits like a pro medic. He looked up at Naaro, waiting. She nodded and put him to work with the nurse-drones on the spot.

It went like that the whole length — devour, rise, and a new usefulness settling into place like a tool in a rack.

Inside Kai’s head, the quiet clicks began — soft and steady, like a water clock counting drops.

[Ding! Kin Devouring Stream active. Transferring host-eligible stat gain.]

The clicks climbed. A number gathered itself behind his eyes the way sand gathers in the corner of a wall.

When the last chest emptied and the last drone stood up straighter, the bell laid the sum on the table of his mind.

[Ding! Kin Devouring Tally: 2,000 enemy corpses consumed by drones. Host stat transfer: +1,036 unallocated. Distribution pending.]

Kai’s brows drew together. "That low?" he asked the system without moving his mouth. "Half a point a body?"

The answer came level and fast.

[Ding! Advisory — Most essence was absorbed at source by brood units. Constraint: Host integration rate at current 5 star rank caps safe passive intake. Excess routed to brood (Monarch Imprint). Result: drones retained profession-grade traits and a larger share of raw stats. The host receives only what current physiology can accept without destabilization.]

"How strong did they get," Kai asked.

[Ding! Estimate — Post-assimilation drone baselines now approach 5★ soldier stats in raw Strength/Speed/Stamina, with variance by cohort role. Skill imprint bundles acquired: Shield Discipline (Yavri school), Causeway & Trap Spadework (Skall doctrine), Iron-Dust Net Casting (Oru patterns), Cord-Signal Drill (Mardek field set), Runner’s Veil (Oru), Field Dressing (basic), Ration Control & March Cadence (Yavri). Cohort leaders can be assigned to specialize.]

Kai let out the breath he’d been holding. "Good," he said aloud. Then to his captains: "Break them into roles. Vexor— Shield cohorts. Shale— Sappers with the spadework. Needle— Net teams and cords. Wolf— Runners and harriers. Flint—Haul and supply. Naaro— keep the medics and teach them where not to touch."

They moved at once, happy the work had a name.

Silvershadow stood with his arm in a sling he didn’t admit to needing and watched the drones sort themselves with that new, tighter way of standing. "They look like they’ve been doing this for years," he murmured.

"They haven’t," Kai said. "They just learn from the experience from the dead bodies. As they have been doing it for years."

For a moment, the mountain hall hummed — forge heat, bowl clink, the low talk of women who had no time to be afraid, the small thrilled rustle of two thousand soldiers remembering they were about to be more.

Then the weight in Kai’s chest returned — the one that had nothing to do with joy.

He opened the road inward and asked the thing he hated to ask.

"System," he said. "When I rank up, I will be stone. Some of Vorak’s men ran. They will bring others. Maybe Vorak himself, maybe sixteen thousand. Is there a way to keep this place safe while I cannot move."

The system did not invent hope it couldn’t deliver.

[Ding! The host lacks active warding/healing skills. However, you possess two (2) Nine-Star cores in bonded storage. Proposal: Convert cores into (1) protective barrier and (2) environmental camouflage. Barrier will resist intrusive force up to 7 star class for the duration of your rank-up. Camouflage will distort long-range scry and line-of-sight. Limitation: Rare artifacts/skills may still pierce or disrupt. Residual risk estimate: 20%.]

"Eighty percent safe," Kai said, weighing. "Better than nothing. Do it."