# PSYCHIC HARVEST

### Chapter 4: The Kettholme Contract

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**PART TWO**

Cinder's first burst of flame tore into the swarm's leading edge and scattered it instantly — but scattering, Ethan realized within seconds, was exactly the wrong word for what a Glasswing Choir did under pressure. The swarm didn't break. It *redistributed*, dozens of small bodies peeling wide around the fire and reforming behind it, the collective hum sharpening into something closer to alarm.

"They're flanking!" Ethan shouted, already moving.

A dozen of them broke off toward Dallin's blind side, wings flashing that unified pulse of light that meant they were seconds from a coordinated strike — and Ethan didn't think, he *acted*, the way weeks of drills had finally, finally taught his body to do without his mind catching up first.

"Mura — now!"

Mura leapt from his shoulder mid-stride, small violet body puffing wide in an instant, and the burst of fine spore-dust that followed hit the flanking group square across their formation. The effect was immediate and strange to watch — a dozen insectile wings stuttering out of rhythm, that eerie collective hum fracturing into discordant, disoriented static, several of them dropping clean out of the air.

*It's not hurting them,* Ethan thought, watching with the same clinical fascination he brought to everything, even mid-fight. *It's breaking their sync. They fight as one mind. Mura's static makes that impossible for a few seconds.*

A few seconds was enough. Dallin spun, Cinder's second burst catching the disoriented cluster before they recovered, and the flanking attempt collapsed entirely.

The main swarm, though, wasn't finished. It surged as one furious, humming mass toward the tunnel mouth — retreating, Ethan realized, not fleeing, *regrouping* deeper into the mine where fire would be harder to use without risking a collapse.

"They're going to dig in," Dallin called, already moving to cut them off. "If they nest deeper, this job gets a lot longer and a lot worse."

Ethan's eyes caught on one Glasswing in particular — larger than the rest, wings pulsing brighter, clearly some kind of lead or matriarch coordinating the retreat. Faster than the others. Smarter, if the way it kept angling clear of both Cinder's fire and Mura's spore-cloud meant anything.

*I could take that one,* the thought arrived, sudden and sharp, the way good ideas always did for him — *lightning-adjacent, psychic-family per the tree, doesn't close doors on Mura's line. A second link. Real firepower to pair with crowd control.*

For one full second, he actually considered it — pictured the Tether leaving his hand, pictured explaining a second creature to Sato, pictured himself stronger, faster, less reliant on any single point of failure.

Then he pictured Mura. Two months old in this bond. Still growing into what he was. Still — Ethan understood this now, in a way he hadn't when he'd first read Sato's warning in the workshop — still *learning him*, the way he was still learning it, the two of them shaping each other slowly instead of all at once.

*Every creature I add pulls strength from every creature I already have.* Sato's voice, patient, in his memory. *Most survivors link once and invest everything into that bond.*

Splitting that now, on a still-forming link, for a fight he was already winning — that wasn't strategy. That was greed wearing strategy's coat.

"Leave the leader," Ethan called instead. "Cut the ones already breaking off. If she loses enough of the swarm's rhythm, she'll pull back on her own rather than lose the whole group."

Dallin didn't question it — just adjusted, trusting the read the way Reyes had learned to weeks ago, and between Cinder's fire and Mura's second, wider burst of disorienting spore-dust, the swarm's retreat became a rout. The lead Glasswing, stripped of enough of her coordinated mass to matter, broke off entirely and vanished deeper into the hills alone, exactly as Ethan had guessed she would.

Silence settled back over the mine entrance, broken only by Cinder's low, satisfied rumble and Mura's tail, puffed with what Ethan was fairly sure was pride.

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Dallin let out a low whistle, surveying the scattered, retreating remnants of the swarm. "You had a shot at the queen back there. I saw you look at her."

"I did."

"Why didn't you take it?"

Ethan crouched, letting Mura climb back up into the crook of his arm, small and warm and entirely unbothered by how close that fight had actually come to being genuinely dangerous.

"Because he's not ready to share what I've got with him yet," Ethan said, surprising himself a little with how simply it came out. "And neither am I."

Dallin studied him for a long moment — the same evaluating look Reyes gave people, Ethan was starting to realize, the look everyone experienced here seemed to share when deciding whether someone new understood the actual shape of this world or just its danger.

"Huh," Dallin said finally, and there was real respect in it. "Most new linkers I've run with would've grabbed for more the second they saw an opening." He clapped Ethan on the shoulder, careful this time to avoid Mura. "You might actually be worth the trip out here, new guy."

"Ethan."

"I know your name." Dallin grinned, already turning back toward Kettholme's terraced hillside, where the village's earth-worked fields caught the last gold light of the afternoon. "I just like watching people earn it before I use it."

Behind them, deep in the hills, the last scattered notes of the Glasswing Choir's broken harmony faded into ordinary silence — and Ethan Cole walked toward his first paid mercenary contract, notebook already half-full of things he'd want to remember, wondering, not for the first time, what Reyes would say when she heard how the day had actually gone.

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*End of Chapter 4*