The island looked peaceful in daylight.

That was the problem. From the beach, it was just white strands draped over trees like someone had tried to gift-wrap an entire ecosystem and gotten bored halfway through. The wind moved the webs in slow waves. Pretty, in a sick way.

Ludger watched the camp work like a machine.

Trainees turned web into cargo. Poles rolled. Bundles stacked. The underground shelter swallowed the injured and spat out bandaged men and women who suddenly stood straighter, because being hurt here meant you’d earned it.

Raukor’s forge sat near the treeline, tucked behind a curtain of stone Ludger had raised as a windbreak. The beastman blacksmith didn’t talk much, but the ring of his hammer carried. It sounded like progress.

It also sounded like a timer.

Viola walked up beside him, boots crunching on sand, hair tied back tight enough to look like she was going to punch a giant out of principle.

“Half the silk is rolled. Rathen wants to push harder. The Ironhand crew says the ship can take more weight than we planned.” 

Rathen approached from the camp, wiping sweat off his brow with a cloth that used to be white. He had that merchant-leader look. someone who could talk to nobles, sailors, and killers without ever changing his tone.

“Ludger,” he said. “I want to discuss timelines.”

“I like timelines,” Ludger replied. “They make panic measurable.”

Rathen stared like he wasn’t sure whether that was a joke.

It was. Sort of.

“We can finish loading before sunset if we push,” Rathen said. “But the injured—”

“Can still carry,” Ludger said. “They can also heal themselves, so it is not a problem. It is better this way.”

Rathen’s eyes narrowed.

Ludger raised a hand before the complaints arrived. “Not the ones who’ll bleed out. The ones who are sore. Everyone here is sore.”

Rathen exhaled. “You’re planning to leave tonight.”

“Yes.”

“You think another attack is coming.”

Ludger didn’t answer immediately. He didn’t deny it either. He didn’t need to. Rathen wasn’t stupid.

“The crows will come,” Raukor said without looking up from the forge.

The blacksmith’s hammer hit metal and sent sparks into the air like tiny dying stars.

“And the spiders,” Raukor continued. “Eventually.”

“That’s a poetic way to say ‘night,’” Viola muttered.

Ludger let the moment stretch just long enough for everyone to feel it.

Then he spoke, calm and flat, like he was asking for the weather.

“Now that everyone’s here,” Ludger said, eyes moving across Viola, and Rathen, “Raukor can tell me again what he told me earlier.”

Raukor’s hammer stopped mid-swing.

Metal rang once as it kissed the anvil and settled. The forge hissed quietly behind him, coals breathing heat into the evening air. He didn’t look guilty. He didn’t look nervous. He just turned his head slightly, like a man inconvenienced by the fact that humans insisted on dramatics.

Viola and Rathen both looked at him. Raukor looked back at them like they were slow.

“As I said,” Raukor replied, matter-of-fact, “I knew what was at the end of the labyrinth.”

The words hit like a thrown rock.

Rathen’s posture tightened. His mind went through calculations Ludger could almost see: risk, profit, politics, the kind of disaster that had a noble’s signature somewhere on it. He hesitated, actually hesitated, before he forced the question out.

“…The Spider Queen?” Rathen asked carefully. “The one that can talk?”

Raukor nodded once. No flourish. No pause. Just confirmation, as if they’d asked whether the ocean was wet. Viola’s expression darkened instantly. Her glare could’ve cut stone. She took a step forward, voice sharp enough to draw blood.

“You knew? And you thought that was worth coming?” she snapped. “You’ve been treating this like a normal hunt, Raukor.”

Raukor blinked once. Slowly. Still not apologetic.

Viola pointed toward the inland webbing, toward the mouth of the labyrinth hidden behind curtains of silk and bone-white strands.

“You told Ludger you’d guide us to a place with good resources,” she said, each word tight. “Not a monster society. Not an underground city. Not a labyrinth ruled by something that speaks like a person and commands like a general.”

Raukor’s ears twitched. He glanced at Ludger, then back to Viola.

“It is resources,” he said simply.

Viola’s jaw clenched. “That is not the point.”

“That is exactly the point,” Raukor replied, tone still flat. “You wanted silk. You wanted magical quality. You wanted a place no one else hunts because it is too dangerous.”

He lifted the bracer he’d been working on, still warm, and held it up like proof.

“This island has all of it. The reason is her.”

Rathen’s voice came quieter, careful, like he was trying not to set off a trap with syllables. “So you knew we were walking into negotiations.”

Raukor shrugged. “Maybe. Or war.”

Viola looked like she wanted to punch him for the shrug alone. Ludger didn’t react. Not outwardly. He just watched, letting them spend their emotions now instead of in the dark later when it mattered.

“You should have said it,” Viola growled.

Raukor didn’t flinch under Viola’s stare.

He just looked at her the way he looked at everything, like the world was full of problems that would exist whether you argued about them or not.

“I did not give more details,” he said, voice steady, “because few people in the Empire know about that.”

Rathen’s brows drew together. “And you’re one of them.”

Raukor nodded once. No pride. No secrecy for the sake of it. Just a fact.

“Those who know,” Raukor continued, “control the information. For reasons I do not know. They keep it quiet. They keep it useful.”

Viola’s eyes narrowed. “Useful to who?”

Raukor shrugged, an almost imperceptible roll of his shoulders. “To those in power.”

He turned slightly, gesturing with the bracer in his hand toward the island’s webbed interior, toward the labyrinth mouth that sat like a patient wound in the trees.

“And also,” he added, tone still flat, “normal people would not believe it.”

Viola blinked. “Why wouldn’t they?”

Raukor looked at her like she’d asked why fire burned.

“Because it is easier,” he said. “Because it is safer for the mind.”

He pointed with two fingers, as if drawing lines on a map only he could see.

“A monster that hunts? People understand. A monster that speaks? That makes bargains? That builds cities under the ground and raises children like soldiers?” He shook his head once. “Most will call it a tavern story. A delver’s lie. A beastman exaggeration.”

Rathen’s mouth tightened. “Or propaganda.”

“Or a trick,” Raukor agreed.

Viola crossed her arms. Her anger had cooled into something sharper. “So you’re saying the Empire hides it because it sounds ridiculous.”

“No,” Raukor said immediately. “Not only that.”

Viola leaned forward. “Then why?”

Raukor exhaled through his nose, the closest thing he gave to a sigh. He set the bracer down on the anvil and rested his hands on the edge of it, palms flat, as if grounding himself before speaking.

“More people outside the Empire know,” he admitted. “The league. The Beastmen. Argarthians. People who live where the world still bites.”

Rathen’s eyes flicked toward Ludger. “But not many.”

“Not many,” Raukor confirmed. “And it stays that way.”

Viola’s voice went hard. “On purpose.”

Raukor nodded.

“For panic,” he said simply.

The word hung in the air. Not dramatic. Not mystical. Just ugly and practical.

Viola scoffed. “Panic over what? One talking spider?”

Raukor’s gaze locked onto her. When he spoke this time, he didn’t raise his voice, but the certainty in it made the words heavier.

“Not one,” he said. “The idea.”

He tapped the anvil once with a knuckle, a dull clang.

“If people know, for a fact, that troublesome creatures live close to their homes, close enough that a bad night or a bad season could push them out… they do not act how those in power want them to act.”

Rathen murmured, “They run.”

Raukor nodded. “They run. They riot. They refuse taxes. They refuse levies. They abandon farms. They empty towns. They stop trading. They stop obeying. They start listening to whoever promises safety, even if that person is worse than the thing they fear.”

Viola’s jaw tightened. She didn’t like it, but she understood it.

“They’d rather people think monsters are just monsters,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Raukor replied. “Because a monster you can kill is a problem.”

He paused, then added, blunt as a hammer strike.

“A monster that can think is a disaster.”

Ludger’s eyes remained on Raukor, unreadable. But his Seismic Sense still pulsed in the background, mapping the island’s hidden movement like an old habit.

Raukor looked at him then, direct, honest.

“I did not tell everyone because it spreads,” he said. “And once it spreads, it cannot be controlled.”

Ludger’s gaze stayed on Raukor for a long second, letting the implication settle into place like a blade sliding into a sheath.

“Then the Imperial family probably knew,” Ludger said, voice level. “And the Regent knows by proxy now, even if no one bothered to say it out loud.”

Raukor nodded once.

No surprise. No denial. Just confirmation, like Ludger had finally bothered to do the math everyone else was avoiding.

Around them, nobody spoke. They didn’t have to. The conclusion was sitting in the open where everyone could see it.

Ludger let out a slow breath and tipped his head back, staring up at the sky. Blue, clean, indifferent. The kind of sky that made people believe they were safe.

He sighed, not because he was tired.

Because he almost hated being right in his kinds of situations.

“The sealed labyrinths,” he said quietly, as if speaking too loudly might make the world even stupider, “they weren’t sealed because they were inconvenient. They were sealed because something was inside that couldn’t be treated like a normal monster.”

He lowered his eyes again. “Guardians like that. Sapient. Territorial. Strategical.”

Rathen’s jaw tightened. Viola’s eyes narrowed, her earlier anger shifting into something colder and more dangerous.

Ludger kept going, each thought snapping into place with ugly clarity.

“And it’s definitely the kind of ‘ally’ someone like the Rodericks and Verk would work with,” he said. “A thinking guardian near a population center is a leverage. Threat without fingerprints.”

Raukor didn’t argue. That was the worst part. When Raukor disagreed, he said so. When he stayed quiet, it meant Ludger had nailed it.

Ludger’s fingers flexed once, the bracer warm on his wrist.

“So,” he said, voice flat, “the leadership of the Empire knew where enemies could escape to. Knew there were doors in the dark with minds behind them.”

He glanced toward the inland webbing, toward the mouth of the labyrinth that had spoken.

“And they still did nothing.”

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