Dawn came cold and grey, painting the peaks in shades of iron.

  Dorn sat at the cave entrance, watching the light creep across the mountains. His body was a map of wounds—shoulder stiff, side aching, ribs screaming with every breath. But the pain was familiar now. Old friend. Constant companion.

  Behind him, the cave stirred. The squirrels emerged first, their eyes hollow with hunger, their movements mechanical. Then the raccoon, still silent, still shaking, but following. Cricket appeared at his elbow, her missing ear cocked toward the backtrail.

  "Nothing," she said. "No torches. No movement. Maybe we lost them."

  "Maybe." Dorn didn't believe it. Neither did she.

  Inside the cave, the box hummed.

  They gathered in a circle around it.

  The glass tubes caught the grey light, turning the seeds inside to liquid gold. The journal lay beside them, open to the final page. Don't fail.

  Vex spoke first. "We need to decide what comes next."

  Flint's jaw tightened. "Decide? There's nothing to decide. We sell them."

  The word hung in the air like a slap.

  "Sell them?" Cricket's voice rose. "Sell life?"

  "Life that we can't use." Flint's missing claw pressed against his chest, a nervous habit. "We're not farmers. We're scavengers. We don't know how to plant things, how to make them grow, how to protect them long enough to harvest. The Dry Settlements are days away through country the Purists know better than we do. We have wounded. We have no supplies. We have—" He stopped, gestured at the box. "We have a beacon that's getting louder every hour."

  Vex stared at her brother. "You want to trade the future for a few months of comfort?"

  "I want to live." Flint's voice cracked. "I want to stop running. I want to sleep without hearing the magnet in my dreams. If we take those seeds to a trade hub, we can get enough water, enough weapons, enough protection to last the rest of our lives. We can build something. A real home. Not a fantasy."

  The squirrels exchanged a glance. The smaller one—a female with patches of missing fur where something had torn it out—spoke for the first time since the escape.

  "My grandmother told stories," she said quietly. "About the Great Foraging. Before the Purists, before the magnets, before the silicon got into everything. She said the squirrels used to travel hundreds of miles, following the seasons, gathering nuts and seeds from places where things still grew."

  The cave went still.

  "She said there were groves of oak in the low mountains. Stands of pine that dropped cones thick as your arm. Meadows full of grain that the old ones had planted and forgotten." The squirrel's eyes were distant, lost in memory. "I thought she was making it up. Stories to make a hungry kit feel better about being hungry."

  She looked at the glass tubes. At the seeds inside.

  "But what if she wasn't? What if those places are still there? What if we could find them?"

  Flint shook his head. "Those are stories. Fairy tales."

  "Everything's a story until it's real." Cricket's voice was soft. "These seeds are real."

  The other squirrel—larger, male, his fur matted and dirty—shifted uncomfortably. "Real doesn't mean we can use them. We don't know how to plant. We don't know how to tend. We don't know if they'll even grow in this ground."

  "We can learn." Vex's voice was fierce. "We can find people who remember. Mossback. The elders in the Dry Settlements. The old ones who carried the stories."

  "And while we're learning, the Preacher is hunting us." Flint's voice rose. "While we're fumbling with dirt and water, his coyotes are climbing these mountains. How long do you think we have? A week? Two? Before the signal leads them right to us?"

  The raccoon made a sound—a low, keening whine that cut through the argument. Everyone turned.

  He was staring at the seeds. His eyes were wet, his body still shaking, but something else was there too. Recognition. Longing.

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  "My mother..." he started. Stopped. Swallowed. "My mother used to tell me about bread. She said the old world had food that came in loaves. Soft. Warm. You could break it with your paws and share it." His voice cracked. "I thought she was crazy."

  No one spoke.

  The box hummed.

  Dorn hadn't moved. He sat at the edge of the circle, watching, listening, weighing.

  Vex turned to him. "You've been quiet."

  "I've been thinking."

  "Share."

  He looked at the group. At the hunger in their eyes—hunger for safety, for hope, for something to believe in. At Flint's fear. At Cricket's dream. At the squirrels, caught between memory and survival. At the raccoon, reaching for a past he'd never known.

  "The Preacher," Dorn said, "doesn't want those seeds."

  Flint snorted. "Obviously. He wants to burn them."

  "He wants to burn them because they represent something." Dorn's voice was flat, measured. "The old world. The sins of the Builders. Everything he's built his gospel on. If those seeds grow, if they produce food, if they prove that the land can be more than a graveyard—his whole belief system crumbles."

  Vex nodded slowly. "So he'll destroy them. And us."

  "Eventually." Dorn looked at Flint. "But not right away. Right now, he's following the signal. He doesn't know we've opened the box. He doesn't know what's inside. He just knows we have something he wants."

  Flint's eyes narrowed. "So?"

  "So selling the seeds to a trade hub doesn't solve the problem. The Preacher will follow the signal there too. He'll burn the hub, kill the traders, take the seeds. And we'll be right back where we started, only now we'll have a mountain of salt between us and safety."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know the Preacher." Dorn touched his Lead-Sight eye. "I've seen what he does to people who have what he wants. He doesn't negotiate. He doesn't trade. He purifies."

  Cricket leaned forward. "So what do we do?"

  Dorn reached into his pack. Pulled out the salt block—pressed with the mark of the mountain herds, heavy with Mossback's hope.

  "We go to the Dry Settlements." He set the block in the center of the circle. "Mossback gave me this. It's currency in the high country. Trade goods. Bribe. Last resort. She knew we'd need it."

  Flint stared at the salt. "The Dry Settlements are a myth. No one's been there in generations."

  "The yearling has." Dorn looked at the pronghorn, silent at the edge of the circle. "His herd summer in the high pastures. He knows the passes. The hidden trails. The places the Purists can't go."

  The yearling met his gaze. Said nothing.

  "The Purists hate the high country," Dorn continued. "Their magnet tech fails in the iron-rich mountains. Their rifles jam. Their Lead-Sight goggles go blind. Up there, we have a chance."

  "A chance," Flint repeated. "Not a guarantee."

  "There are no guarantees." Dorn's voice hardened. "There's only this—we carry the only thing in the Frontier that can grow food. That can feed the hungry. That can build something new. If we sell it, we're no better than the Preacher. If we hide it, we're just waiting to die. But if we plant it—if we find a place where it can grow—we change the world."

  The cave fell silent.

  The smaller squirrel moved closer to the box. Her paw reached out, hovering over the glass tubes, not quite touching.

  "My grandmother," she whispered, "would have wanted this."

  Flint looked at her. At the longing in her eyes. At the hope he'd been trying to kill.

  He looked at Vex. At his sister's scarred face, streaked with dust and tears.

  He looked at the seeds.

  "Fine," he said. "We try."

  Vex's breath caught. "Flint—"

  "Don't thank me." He stood, turned away. "We'll probably die up there. Freeze. Starve. Get picked off by the Preacher's scouts." He looked back over his shoulder. "But at least we'll die trying to build something, instead of selling it to people who'll just burn it."

  The raccoon made another sound—not a whine this time, but something almost like a laugh.

  "Bread," he said. "I'd like to taste bread before I die."

  Cricket smiled. It was a small thing, fragile, but real.

  "Then let's go find some."

  A shadow passed over the cave mouth.

  Dorn was on his feet, claws extended, before his brain registered what he'd seen. A bird—large, dark, circling high above. A hawk. Or a crow. Something that rode the thermals and watched the ground with eyes that missed nothing.

  It circled once. Twice. Then it was gone.

  Dorn stood motionless, watching the empty sky.

  "What is it?" Vex asked.

  "That bird." He pointed. "Circling. Watching."

  "Just a bird."

  "Birds don't circle over bare rock. They circle over prey. Over carrion. Over things that don't belong." He looked at the box. "Or over things that hum."

  Cricket moved to the entrance, scanned the sky. "I don't see anything."

  "It's gone. But it was there." Dorn turned back to the group. "The signal is getting stronger. The Preacher might not be able to follow it yet, but other things can. Scavengers. Predators. Things that sense the pulse."

  Flint's face went pale. "You're saying the box is attracting animals?"

  "I'm saying we're carrying a beacon. Every minute we sit here debating, we're building a road for the Preacher to walk on." Dorn looked at the salt block. At the seeds. At the survivors. "We need to move. Now."

  No one argued.

  They packed in silence.

  The wounded were helped to their feet. Supplies were divided—what little they had. The box was lifted between Flint and Vex, its weight a familiar burden.

  The smaller squirrel paused at the cave entrance. She looked back at the place where the seeds had been opened, where the smell of life had filled the dark.

  "I'll remember this," she said quietly. "The way it smelled. The way it felt." She looked at Dorn. "Whatever happens next, I'll remember."

  Dorn nodded. Said nothing.

  The yearling stood at the cave entrance, facing north.

  "There's a trail," he said. "Behind the peak. The herd uses it to reach the high pastures. It's steep. Dangerous. But the Purists don't know it."

  "Can you lead us?" Dorn asked.

  The yearling looked at him. His dark eyes held something new—not grief, not fear, but purpose.

  "My mother wanted me to live," he said. "This is living."

  He turned and started walking.

  The survivors followed. One by one, they filed out of the cave and into the cold mountain morning.

  Dorn brought up the rear, watching their backs, reading the trail behind them for any sign of pursuit.

  The sky was empty. For now.

  But somewhere below, the Preacher was waking. Counting his dead. Sharpening his magnet.

  And the box hummed on, calling him home.