The cave exploded into motion the moment the first beast lunged. Stone cracked beneath its weight as it tore itself from the wall of beasts, one massive arm swinging toward Sagiri with enough force to collapse rock on impact. Sagiri moved instantly, sliding beneath the strike as the arm smashed into another beast beside him, the entire wall bursting apart in a rain of shattered stone as the two went flying into the cavern wall.

Dust filled the air. Another shape moved through it. A second beast. Then a third. What had looked like part of the cave moments ago began pulling itself free from the darkness around him. Sagiri drew Nokai and drove forward before they could fully surround him, his blade carving across the nearest creature’s rock-hard shell. Sparks burst from the impact instead of blood.

The strike cut deep enough to split layers of rock apart, exposing glowing fractures beneath, but the creature barely slowed. It swung downward immediately. Sagiri twisted away as the fist crashed into the ground, the cave floor exploding upward beneath him. He planted one foot against falling debris and launched himself higher, rebounding off the cavern wall as another beast charged through the dust below.

Nokai flashed downward in a sharp arc, splitting through the creature’s shoulder and carving a glowing line through its body. The beast staggered but kept moving. Its massive hand slammed into Sagiri mid-air, throwing him violently across the cavern. He hit the wall hard enough to crack the stone behind him before pushing off again instantly as another strike crushed the exact spot where he had landed. The cave shook continuously now.

The hit was not enough to hurt Sagiri, but he was measuring the strength of the damned beasts. They were strong indeed. If the two squads were foolish enough to engage, then they probably were dead. Normal blades are useless against them, and now that they were enraged, they were total monsters.

They formed pillars upon each other to meet him in the air.

Massive arms tore up the stone pillars, collapsing sections of the cavern while Sagiri moved between falling debris and crushing blows at full speed, his body twisting through impossibly small gaps as Nokai struck again and again at the glowing fractures hidden beneath the creatures’ rocky shells. Every clash sounded like metal crashing against mountains. One beast grabbed for him with both arms. Sagiri stepped onto the incoming limb, sprinted along it, then drove Nokai directly into the creature’s skull. The glowing cracks across its body burst outward instantly, light flooding through the fractures before the entire upper half of the beast collapsed apart in an avalanche of broken rock. The others came faster after that, roaring through the cave as though the mountain itself had awakened to kill him.

The cave erupted even further as the Rock Crawlers moved. Turns out the cave was made only of rock crawlers, and they just kept coming. They had created a cave just to trap him. What had looked like uneven stone scattered across the cavern floor continuously unfolded into bodies, dozens of them tearing themselves free from the walls and ground with violent grinding sounds.

Smaller than the great stone beasts but far faster, the Crawlers rushed across the cave on long jagged limbs, their clawed hands scraping sparks from the rock as they climbed walls and ceilings with unnatural speed. Sagiri moved the instant the first reached him. Nokai flashed across the darkness, splitting one clean through the torso, rock fragments exploding outward, but two more were already lunging through the debris.

He ducked low again as one flew over him, its claws tearing deep grooves into the cave wall behind him, then twisted sharply and drove his blade upward through another as it descended from the ceiling. The impact shattered glowing cracks across its body before it collapsed into loose stone at his feet. More kept coming. The Crawlers moved like a swarm through the cavern, pouring from narrow cracks and dark tunnels in relentless waves, using the cave itself to attack from every angle. One sprinted sideways across the wall before launching directly at his head. Sagiri stepped aside at the last instant, and the creature smashed through a stone pillar instead, bringing part of the ceiling down around them.

Dust swallowed the cave. Shapes rushed through it immediately. Sagiri pushed forward through the collapse instead of retreating, weaving between snapping claws and crushing limbs as Nokai carved glowing lines through rocky bodies around him. The cavern shook continuously under the force of the fight. Crawlers burst from the walls, dropped from above, and rushed low across the ground, forcing Sagiri into constant motion.

He rebounded off broken stone, spun through narrow gaps between attacks, and cut through creatures mid-air while debris crashed around him. Every strike against them sounds like a stone breaking under impossible force. Still, they kept coming, endless shapes crawling through the darkness of Boni’s caves as though the mountain itself was trying to bury him alive beneath claws and rock.

Sagiri reaped into the air as much as possible to avoid all the hundreds of attacks, and Nokai split into ten by his command. Nokai was a blade of the desert, and Sagiri called onto the sand while his blades went to work. He had become more accustomed to the desert dance, and the sand had always responded anytime he did it. He could just crush the very core of Boni Valley, but he did not know yet where. If he did that, he could just risk burying them alive.

Zaira had not stirred again, even as the battle got deadly.

"Aren’t you supposed to help me find my friends?" Sagiri said as sand formed under his feet, forming pillars for him to jump from one to another. he would wait until he found the squads before he did anything extreme.

Sagiri managed to get away from the beasts. Nokai was still engaging the beasts, so he could have a breather.

The pillar he currently stood on rose higher with him. He needed to leave the ground of boni. Those beasts were creating false passages and ways.

When he was high enough that he could see all the jagged peaks of Boni Valley, he stopped. He pushed the archive out all over the valley. He calmed his senses and sent them out as far as he could. His ears were not going to miss anything this time.

One heartbeat of silence went by, then another. The beasts were forming their own pillars to reach him quickly, even with Nokai slowing them down, but he remained calm. What mattered was to find them first.

One heartbeat, two.... twenty...then another... went by.

Then....

Faintly, just as the four pillars of rock beats rose to his level, he felt something.

Fear. desperation....

Found you!

Sagiri snapped his eyes open just as one lunged at him. This was going to hurt a little. Sagiri brazed himself to dodge the attack and free-fall while forming another sand pillar.

The beast did not reach him before an arrow tore through a crevice on its lower body. How skillful. The beast went tumbling, but more were still coming, only they were facing the same fate. Sagiri steadied himself immediately and shot his right eye in the direction the arrows had come from.

Salka.

He was holding a bow and another arrow on the ready. Beside him, Lotaga was holding a bow and arrow. Same to Yavaga, Matasi and Kolu, of course, with two big cats beside Salka. So they were the six heartbeats Sagiri had felt earlier, except Salka’s. The man was a literal shadow and the best at it.

Lotaga was waving madly. More beasts were still coming, and Sagiri took the divergence of them defending him to make his own call for more sand for more pillars to reach them.