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The Tribes
Book One: The Catastrophe
Chapter 5: The Scattering
The explosion did not sound like thunder.
It sounded like something deeper.
Like roots tearing from the soil of reality itself.
The vessel did not simply burst.
It unraveled.
Fragments of living bark and shattered resonance membranes tore through a collapsing dimensional corridor.
Passengers were thrown into dispersal pods mid-evacuation, but the pods themselves lost cohesion as the corridor collapsed.
Light fractured.
Gravity inverted.
Then…
Branches.
Cold air.
The smell of unfamiliar earth.
Squirrels fell.
Not in formation.
Not in dignity.
But in chaos.
Some crashed through leaves.
Some struck trunks.
Some tumbled through undergrowth.
A young apprentice collided with a mossy log and lay stunned.
A healer landed in a thorn bush, bleeding but conscious.
Elder Mosswhisk struck a branch, twisted, and fell into a pile of dead leaves.
Across miles of forest, survivors gasped and scrambled.
The sky above them was blue.
Blue.
No luminous canopy.
No drifting platforms.
No resonance hum.
Just wind.
And the distant cry of a bird none of them recognized.
Elder Bristlethorn pulled himself upright on an unfamiliar tree trunk.
The bark was rough.
Unpolished.
Unresponsive.
He pressed his paw to it.
Nothing answered.
“Gather!” he called instinctively.
But his voice carried only so far.
There was no amplification lattice.
No harmonic network.
Just air.
In the distance, smoke rose briefly, organic fragments from the vessel combusting as their dimensional structure failed.
Then even that faded.
The living ship did not remain as wreckage.
Its structure, dependent on corridor energy, withered and dissolved into inert matter, bark, sap, ash.
Unrecognizable.
As if it had never existed.
Hours passed.
Injured squirrels limped toward sound.
Toward movement.
Toward instinct.
By nightfall, small clusters had formed across the forest.
Confused.
Grieving.
Counting the missing.
Professor Tharnix Quillroot did not answer any call.
The first night was silent except for wind and the occasional unfamiliar animal cry.
They had expected to return home for supper.
Instead, they huddled in branches that did not know them.
And for the first time in generations…
The squirrels of Luminbough were afraid.
(To be continued in Chapter 6: The Giants)
