CHAPTER 16: CHAPTER 16: THE WAR OF SILENCE

The first strike did not come with claws or teeth. It arrived inside their heads.

Buzz felt it as a weight behind his eyes, pressing until even memory seemed to shift. The forest bent out of shape, trees folding in on themselves like broken wings. His legs shook as he tried to hold his ground.

He turned toward Zza, but her face was wrong. For an instant she wore the Queen’s expression, eyes too bright, mouth curling into that empty smile he hated.

Her voice slipped between tones. "You could stop crawling. You could rest."

Buzz clenched his jaw until pain cut through the haze. Zza’s real face broke through, strained but her own, her mandibles moving in quick whispers. "It isn’t me. Don’t look too hard."

The others fared worse. The Scarabs pounded their drums in panic, rhythm splintering into wild noise. One of them turned on another, claws striking shell as if kin had turned into prey.

Above them the Glowbeetles flared without pattern, stabbing the chamber with light so sharp it blinded friend and ally alike. The Centipedes writhed in their coils, striking at shadows only they could see. One envoy’s body broke under the crushing weight of its neighbor.

Buzz felt the same pull. His body begged to lash out. His mind whispered that violence would quiet the storm. The silence in his skull promised relief if he just gave in.

He refused. His mandibles cut into themselves as he ground them shut. Blood filled his mouth, bitter and grounding.

The Elder descended, silk lashing out to bind a thrashing Centipede. "She is inside us," its voice rang.

Buzz forced his legs forward. "Then we cut her out."

He saw Zza across the clearing, locked against a Scarab twice her size. The beast’s claws hammered the ground where she had stood. She darted aside but her eyes were lost, trapped in the Queen’s spell.

Buzz hurled himself into the Scarab, not with strength but with desperation enough to topple it sideways. "Zza," he gasped.

Her focus sharpened, if only for a moment. She saw him. She struck, her threads binding the Scarab’s limbs until its body sagged and fell.

She caught her breath. "We’re killing each other."

Buzz turned, eyes sweeping the battlefield. Scarabs striking Scarabs. Centipedes tearing their own flesh. Glowbeetles shattering themselves against stone.

The Queen’s silence pressed deeper. No sound, no thought, only a suffocating absence.

Zza gripped his arm. "Speak."

Buzz’s throat was raw, but he forced the words out. "I am still crawling."

The sound reached them. A Scarab froze mid-swing. A Centipede loosened its coils. A Glowbeetle dimmed its wild flashing.

The Elder’s voice rumbled above them. "Anchor on him. Anchor on the one who bleeds and still moves."

Buzz felt the silence clawing inside him, searching for the cracks. He pushed back with everything left in him. "If I fall, all of you fall. So keep moving. Crawl until she cannot drown us."

Zza spoke beside him, steady and sharp. "Crawl and bleed. That is how we remain ourselves."

The chamber filled with noise again. Scarabs struck their drums with control instead of frenzy. Glowbeetles pulsed in steady patterns. Centipedes drew tight circles that held instead of breaking.

The Queen’s silence wavered, weakened by the weight of their defiance.

The army breathed again.

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The silence did not lift. It only shifted, curling tighter into the corners of their minds. Each heartbeat carried her voice, not spoken but laid over thought like a second skin.

Buzz felt it first as memory bending out of shape. The day of the flood returned, but not as he remembered it. In this vision, he had not saved the Weaverworms. He had left them to drown, wings carrying only himself to safety. Their eyes accused him, hundreds of them, pale and dim, whispering that his survival had been theft. He shook his head, knowing it was false, but the weight clung to him.

Zza cried out nearby. She was caught in her own vision. Buzz turned and saw her staring at a body that looked like him, lifeless, wings broken, voice gone. The Queen’s laughter poured from the corpse in place of breath. Zza’s hands shook as she reached for it, unable to look away. Buzz moved to her, grabbed her arm, pulled her eyes back to him. "I am here," he said, voice harsh with effort. She blinked and the vision broke, but the tremor in her chest did not ease.

Around them the others staggered under their own illusions. A Scarab clawed at its shell, convinced something inside it was hatching. A Glowbeetle shrieked as its light dimmed, believing the Queen had stolen its glow forever. A Centipede curled in on itself, biting its own segments to silence voices only it could hear.

The Elder dropped lower, silk wrapping frenzied bodies, trying to pin them before they tore themselves apart. "This is her strength," it said. "She turns the mind into the battlefield."

Buzz staggered, sweat running through his shell. He forced himself upright, wings trembling. "Then she is afraid to face us with her body."

The silence grew sharper at his words, like claws dragging inside his skull. Her voice seeped through again, smooth and calm, as if she had never been challenged. "You cannot fight what you are. You crawl because I allow it. You bleed because I command it. Stop resisting, and the pain will end."

Buzz clenched his mandibles. "If you wanted us gone, we would be gone already."

The forest around them rippled. Leaves shivered. The soil cracked. The silence thinned and for a heartbeat the world breathed again.

Then it hit.

The ground split as roots tore free, snapping like whips. Branches bent down as if dragged by invisible hands. From the center of the clearing, the air folded inward, and her body stepped through.

The Queen was taller than any of them remembered. Her carapace shone like molten gold, wings spread wide, every vein pulsing with light that was not natural. Her eyes swept across them, and each gaze cut deeper than any blade.

The psychic war had been only the opening move.

Now she had come to finish it with her hands.

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