I can still hear their thoughts.

Not as voices. Not exactly.

More like little ghosts caught in the corners of the Link, fragments left behind after the minds that made them were gone. Scraps of laughter. A passing irritation. A preference for one kind of nectar over another. The shape of fear at the moment of death. Small, useless things that should have vanished with them, but didn’t.

Those who fell left a hollow space inside me, and somehow I seem to be the only one unable to step around it.

The hive continues.

Workers still work. Soldiers still patrol. Nurses still tend to the sick. Life flows onward with a steadiness that feels almost cruel. Their siblings died, and yet the others continue as if the loss has already been folded into the natural rhythm of things. Some of them even try to comfort me.

As long as we live, we’ll carry their memory with us.

You are not to blame, Mother.

They returned to the earth. They are still with us.

I try to accept those words. I really do.

But all I can think about is how I let this happen.

If I had chosen differently, could I have saved them? If I had listened to what my children wanted from me, if I had followed the path they believed was right, would they still be alive? Would their bodies still be warm? Would their minds still be connected to mine, bright and noisy and alive?

And the worst question of all is the one I can’t stop asking.

Did they really die?

Of course they died.

That much is absolute. Their bodies no longer hold warmth. Their wings no longer tremble. Their mouths no longer move. What remains of them is buried in the soil, already becoming part of the earth that raised them.

But the thing that made them them…

That still exists.

Their memories, their emotions, their opinions, their little habits and fears and certainties—they still reverberate through the hive as if they are only sleeping somewhere beyond my reach. The only difference is that there is no consciousness attached to those pieces anymore. No one looks back when I touch them. No one answers.

They are not people now.

They are information.

Precious, unbearable information stored in a drawer, waiting to fade with time.

I’m so stupid.

Why did I ever think I could protect them from the world? I can’t even protect myself. How was I supposed to protect my children?

The feeling is like sinking into mud. Slow, cold, patient. It creeps up my legs and pulls at my roots, and a part of me wants to stop fighting it. To let myself sink. To let the weight close over my head and silence everything.

But I can’t.

If I surrender to this sadness, if I let this throbbing misery swallow me whole, all I’ll do is give more power to it.

And I can’t do that.

Not to myself.

Not to them.

Even if it hurts in my flesh and echoes through my bones, I have to stop myself from feeling this. Or at least, I have to stop it from reaching the others.

But how?

How do I make it stop hurting?

I don’t know.

I never know.

Sometimes it feels like I only continue existing because I have obligations left unfinished. The purpose of my life is to make sure my children survive, and even at that, I failed.

So what am I supposed to do now?

I try not to let my true feelings reach the rest of the hive, but the Link betrays me.

I can say I’m fine. I can smile. I can tell them everything will be all right. But beneath the words, the Link carries what my mouth refuses to say. A wave of sadness. Thick. Heavy. Impossible to silence.

For a few seconds, I thought I could hide it.

It was stupid, but I believed it.

The Link is not a simple conversation across distance. It is not a string with words passing from one end to the other.

It is a system of living cables running through all of us.

Mana. Instinct. Obedience. Hunger. Fear. Pain. Excitement.

All of it travels through the same channels.

I can send orders through it. Receive alerts. Feel injuries before I see blood. Sense when a worker is hungry, when a soldier is afraid, when a nurse is pleased with her work.

And, apparently, I can also radiate sadness.

At first, it is only a small flaw. A crack in a mana conduit. A heaviness slipping out before I can catch it. I think no one will notice.

Then the workers begin to slow.

Soldiers turn toward me with concern they are too afraid to voice.

The nurses hesitate.

Their eyes scream what their mouths do not.

Are you okay?

The question comes from every direction, not in words, but in sensations. Genuine worry. Confusion. Fear carefully held back because they do not want to burden me with it.

Damn it.

I close my eyes and force myself to steady.

I’m fine, I answer through the Link.

My mental voice comes out firm. Calm. Almost perfect.

But the Link does not care about my voice.

Beneath the words, my sadness continues to seep through. Slow, thick, suffocating. It is not a beautiful sadness. Not gentle. Not poetic. It is exhaustion. Guilt. Fear. The miserable feeling of standing surrounded by children, servants, soldiers, and promises, yet still feeling alone in the one place no one can reach without being hurt alongside me.

Mother?

Hans’s consciousness brushes against mine.

His concern touches the Link so clearly it almost breaks me in two.

Then more minds gather. One after another, their consciousnesses scrape softly against mine, trying to comfort me, trying to understand, trying to reach the wound they can feel but cannot see.

They want to embrace me.

Instead, I feel suffocated.

Because if I panic, they will panic.

If I collapse, the entire hive will feel it.

My pain is not only mine anymore. That is the true problem with being the Queen Mother. Even my weakness has consequences.

I try to pull everything back.

I push the sadness down into myself, into some hidden part no one can touch. Anywhere but the Link. I try to treat it like a flow failure, like excess pressure inside a mana cable. Something technical. Something manageable. Something that should obey if I apply enough force.

But emotion does not obey like energy.

The more I compress it, the more it leaks.

So I do something I shouldn’t.

I grab the Link.

Not physically. There is nothing to hold.

And yet there is.

Threads. Roots. Invisible channels running through my consciousness, stretching from me to every member of the hive.

Until then, I had always used the Link naturally. Open. Send. Receive. Like breathing.

But in that moment, I stop breathing.

I bend it.

I tie it.

I twist it into a shape it was never meant to take.

The sensation is horrible.

Like forcing an arm backward until the joint reaches an angle that should not exist. My emotions slam against the knot, chaotic and desperate, with nowhere to go. Like water rushing through a channel that has suddenly been blocked.

I almost scream.

But it works.

The sadness stops flowing freely.

It is still there.

Worse, maybe.

Compressed inside me, pressing against my roots, my mind, my nonexistent chest. Fermenting. Boiling. Like scalding water trapped inside a skull that has been cracked open and forced shut again.

But the hive receives less.

For one fragile moment, there is silence.

No one understands where my emotions went.

The whole hive stills, stunned, like small ships suddenly losing sight of the lighthouse they were following.

Then comes concern again.

Questioning.

They can feel that something in the Link has changed. Maybe not as clearly as I can, because they are not the source. I am. But they still feel it. The absence. The sudden distance between them and my deepest feelings.

They know something is wrong.

Something has changed.

And I cannot let them see the flaw.

So I create a mask.

I reach for a better memory.

A peaceful morning in Aurum’s garden.

Sunlight lying warm across the leaves. Worker bees moving between flowers. Mana flowing steadily through the living cables beneath my awareness. I was sitting quietly in the garden, holding a small cup of tea, watching everything move without needing me to fix it.

Tranquility.

Calm.

A small, simple happiness.

I take that memory and spread it across the Link like a thin layer of wax over a crack.

Underneath, I am still sad.

But the surface shows something else.

The mask trembles.

My real emotions press against the memory, and for a moment I feel both at once: the suffocating darkness inside me and the warm peace I am forcing outward.

It feels wrong.

Disgusting.

But effective.

Useful.

Necessary.

It has to be the right answer.

I need it to be the right answer.

I’m fine, I transmit through the Link once more.

This time, they believe me.

Because when their minds brush against mine, they no longer feel sadness. They feel calm. Happiness. Tranquility.

Now my words match what the Link carries.

Some of them still seem confused, as if a scent has vanished too quickly from the air, but they cannot identify what is wrong. The hive, as a whole, accepts my answer as truth.

One by one, their consciousnesses drift away from mine. Their doubts settle. Their worries soften. Life resumes.

Hans is the last to leave.

His presence touches the Link gently, like someone knocking on the door of a dark room.

Are you sure?

That is all he asks.

As if some part of him still knows.

I almost let the mask slip.

Almost.

For a moment, I want him to know. I want someone to know. I want him to see everything. The exhaustion. The guilt. The fear of losing them all. The terrible thought that sometimes I want all the voices to go silent, if only for one breath.

But Hans is my son.

And children should not carry that kind of weight.

So I smile through the Link.

Not with real joy.

With the memory of it.

I’m sure, dear. Go back to work. I was only thinking.

The lie comes out perfectly.

Gentle.

Maternal.

Cruel.

Hans hesitates for another moment.

Then he obeys.

When his presence finally fades, I return fully to myself and realize I am crying.

Not softly.

Not beautifully.

The tears fall without stopping, staining the ground beneath my feet while the hive continues to function around me.

Because the bending is still there.

Inside the Link.

Inside me.

A new technique, perhaps.

A circus trick.

An intentional defect.

I don’t know the difference anymore.

But I understand enough about what I did to fear it.

I didn’t just hide my feelings.

I chose what the hive was allowed to feel from me.

The guilt comes soon after, sharp and heavy.

Instinctively, the fold tries to filter that too. It catches the guilt before it can reach the Link, smothers it beneath the memory of calm, and sends only peace outward.

The hive remains steady.

I keep everything else.

And this time, only I suffer from it.

---

Weeks later.

It has been some time since I “created the mask.”

I still can’t explain exactly what I did. Not completely. But whatever it was, it seriously altered the Link.

The connection I have with my children has not weakened. I can still speak to them. I can still feel where they are. Orders still pass through. Alerts still reach me. The structural parts of the Link remain intact.

But my control over the hive’s emotions has changed.

No.

That isn’t right.

It has weakened.

Before, I could influence the hive’s emotional state almost directly. Anger. Sadness. Happiness. Urgency. Calm. Not perfectly, and not always gently, but the possibility existed. My emotions could become theirs, and with enough pressure, I could make the whole hive move under the weight of what I felt.

Now that power is mostly gone.

Or rather, I blocked it myself.

I can still talk to them through the Link. I can still sense them in broad strokes. But I can no longer read them as deeply as before. I cannot look at a worker and know, just by the subtle vibration of the Link, whether he is happy, sad, angry, or uncomfortable.

That part of the connection has gone quiet.

I think if I untied the knot, things would return to normal.

But I don’t want to.

I don’t want them to feel my weakness.

I don’t want to make them weak with me.

It isn’t their fault my mind has been broken from the start. It isn’t their fault that every loss becomes a wound I can’t close. I cannot let my failures and mistakes keep spreading through them. Not if I want them to survive.

Without my emotional interference, they can focus on their duties without worrying about whether poor Queen Mother is having a bad day.

Honestly, I feel pathetic for not having the strength to do this sooner.

It does not matter that my power over them has diminished.

What matters is that I have stopped being a burden.

Steve knows I did something.

He came to speak with me the same day I changed the Link. He could not say exactly what I had done. Even though his skill with Link manipulation is greater than mine, he is not the source.

I am.

The difference matters.

It is like a person inspecting the wiring in a house from the outside, while I am the one standing at the main power source. He can understand the system better than I can in some ways, but there are parts only I can touch. A socket can be unplugged. A wire can be moved. A channel can be damaged near the origin, and unless the change is large enough, no one else will fully understand what happened.

In my case, I damaged only one channel of the Link.

The emotional channel.

Then I made it send selected information instead of real-time truth.

I am still new to this manipulation of memories and emotions, but I understand the basics now. If I concentrate hard enough on a memory, on a sensation, I can transmit that to the hive instead of what I am actually feeling.

This protects them from my fragility.

And that is right.

It needs to be right.

It needs to work.

I just have to keep smiling. I have to reassure them. I have to say everything will be all right. Even if I don’t believe my own words, I need to make them believe.

Because someone has to.

Someone has to believe that things can still get better.

We will build walls.

We will raise ramparts.

We will seek allies.

We will survive.

It does not matter if the path is twisted. It does not matter if I have to leave pieces of myself behind along the way.

I will keep my promise.

I will keep them safe.

No matter what stands in my way.

---

 

Days Later

 

 

I was sketching out a few ideas that might help the hive in the future and studying some common magic when the notification suddenly appeared.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise that Matt evolved.

Or rather, it wasn’t surprising that he managed to gain XP even in this shitty situation.

Matt’s class allows him to gain XP by mapping new places, detecting danger, and successfully tracking things. It is somewhat similar to Trevis, who gains XP through related methods, but their paths are not the same.

Trevis is more focused on concealment, espionage, and locating specific targets. He moves like a shadow, gathering information and slipping through gaps others do not notice.

Matt, on the other hand, is more focused on identifying dangers, remembering routes, marking locations, and making sure others can move safely through unfamiliar territory.

They both come from the Ranger branch, but while Trevis leans toward deception and information gathering, Matt leans toward exploration and guidance.

As soon as I project my consciousness near him, I see Matt—or rather, his pupa—being carried into the cave. Behind him lies the familiar empty shell left behind by evolution.

Matt is still small. His last evolution happened before I was even a Crystal Bee. But now he is going to become a Feyweaver, so I expect his pupa to grow a lot.

A whole lot.

After all, going from something the size of a basketball to something closer to a five- or seven-year-old child is not a small change. It is exponential.

But the question burning in my mind is much more important.

Should I inject him with life mana?

It worked with Ken last time, but was that really because of the evolution process? Or was it because Ken was already a Support type and therefore more compatible with that kind of change?

I don’t know.

I don’t want to risk harming Matt.

But I also know this is important.

Not only would it answer a question about the evolution process, but it might give Matt an Affinity. And if it works, it could help all my future children as well.

I was afraid to do this with Hans, and because of that fear, I might have taken away her chance to become a little stronger. In this shitty world, power is the only thing that keeps you alive. Taking away a child’s chance to grow is no different from crippling them before the world has even had the chance to strike.

A few minutes later, Matt’s pupa reaches the deepest part of the cave and is carefully placed on the soft silk floor we use for resting.

I approach him.

His pupa is small enough for me to lift with one hand. It shifts and squirms in my palm, and when I touch him, I feel something coming from inside.

I…

I can’t tell what it is.

Before, I would have known whether it was happiness that I was here, or fear of what might happen, or simple discomfort from the evolution itself.

Now, I can’t hear it.

The realization sits cold inside me.

I force my face to remain calm.

The [Nurses] arrive soon after to take Matt somewhere safer, and they find me holding him.

“Queen Mother! What a joy to see you here!” one of the [Nurses] says brightly, rising into the air to hover above Matt’s pupa. “Isn’t it incredible that Matt managed to evolve?”

“Yes…” I say, allowing a small smile to appear. “I’m proud of him.”

Then I lift one finger toward Matt.

“I’m going to grant him some life mana. I want you to monitor him closely and report any anomalies.”

The [Nurses] do not look worried.

If anything, they seem pleased.

As if my decision to put Matt at risk for a maybe is something to celebrate.

Carefully, I begin directing a thin thread of mana into Matt’s body.

I can see it wrapping around his core, clinging to him like a tentacle coiling around a sphere. Matt’s small, fragile pupa trembles violently, as if in pain.

I close my eyes so I won’t stop halfway.

I focus only on the mana inside him.

The thread has attached itself to his core, but it has not merged. So I command the life mana to sink deeper.

Vein-like lines begin to form across the surface of Matt’s core as the life mana forces its way inside. His core vibrates and hisses. Matt struggles harder in my hand, writhing so violently that I have to hold him more firmly to keep him from falling.

His core shifts from vibrant blue to turquoise.

Then green.

Then, finally, a deep earthy green.

Its shape begins to change as well. The smooth sphere develops sides and angles, slowly forming into a dodecahedron that vibrates faintly inside his body, making the pupa tremble with each pulse.

When I open my eyes, Matt’s pupa has changed color.

The waxy yellow has darkened into a muted brown, marked by deep green spots.

At last, he stops writhing.

All I can feel now are the small vibrations coming from his magical core.

I gently place him on the silk bed and step back, afraid I might hurt him if I keep touching him.

I feel as if I caused him pain.

But I felt no pain from him through the Link.

I can’t tell whether he was struggling from discomfort, happiness, rejection, or something else entirely.

I am blind in the one place I used to see most clearly.

So all I can do is guess.

“Take care of him, boys,” I say as I stand.

“No problem, Queen Mother!” one of the [Nurses] answers in an admiring tone. “I’m sure Matt must be very happy to receive the Queen’s grace!”

As if what I just did to him was simply good.

As if there could be no doubt.

“Of course…” I say, giving them a small, false smile. “I’ll return to my quarters. Keep up the good work, children.”

Then I leave, returning to my room where I can at least try to be useful.

---

 

Several days pass after Matt’s evolution begins.

More days than usual.

Normally, three to five days are enough for an evolution around here, but Matt takes twelve full days to reach this stage.

His pupa changes a lot during that time.

Hard spines form across the surface, almost like stone. Cracks spread through the shell, glowing faintly with a soft golden hue. The texture becomes rough, like coarse sandpaper.

He grows as well, though not as much as Hans did. His pupa becomes only slightly larger than Ken’s, while taking on a strange polyhedral shape.

I already know he is close to emerging. Our connection signals that he is preparing for it, and soon enough, the pupa begins to crack.

Unlike Ken’s pupa, which burst like an overripe fruit hitting the ground, Matt’s shatters like a vase dropped onto stone.

Inside, there is no slime.

There is mud.

Thick, heavy mud.

I instinctively step back to avoid it, but the mud flows so slowly that the movement is unnecessary.

The [Nurses] swarm around Matt almost immediately, using their mouths to lick him clean and remove whole chunks of the mud covering his body. From their expressions, I can tell that unlike Ken’s pink slime, this mud is not tasty. More than one [Nurse] grimaces while working, but none of them stop.

In a short time, Matt’s body is cleaned.

Then I see him properly.

He resembles a thin boy of about ten years old. His hair is short and spiky, with the lower portion beneath his ears a deep brown, while the upper part is a golden blond. His antennae are, for some reason, larger and thicker than mine. He also has something on his ears that looks almost like headphones.

His body is covered in light black chitin armor. Unlike mine, Matt’s armor is more opaque and appears thicker. Aside from that, much of him follows the usual pattern: human-like eye shape with insectile interiors, black nails, sharp claws…

And, for some reason, the most human and perfect teeth I have ever seen.

Normally, our teeth are sharp and arranged more like a shark’s, but Matt’s are closer to human teeth, at least from what I can see so far.

Status.

I analyze Matt as he starts to regain awareness of his surroundings.

 

 

“Hm… He developed an affinity with [Earth]?” I murmur while reading Matt’s information. “Interesting… Physically, he’s quite frail, but that dexterity is absurdly high.”

Looking at Matt’s skills, one thing becomes very clear.

He is a Ranger.

But unlike Trevis, who is focused more on assassination and concealment, Matt has clearly leaned into a support role. A Ranger specialized in exploration, tracking, and location.

Honestly, it suits him well.

Matt has always been carefree when it comes to work, which is a very rare trait in the hive, but that doesn’t mean he had no role. His job was always to explore the region, mark collection points, and act as a lookout for groups of [Collectors].

He liked that work mainly because it was peaceful.

He never fought anything. He barely even got close to conflict. If anything, his job was to prevent conflict from happening by identifying danger before it reached us.

But seriously… {Not Reliable}? What kind of [Trait] is that? Matt might be a little lazy, but he is reliable…

Some of his skills are very interesting.

The one that draws my attention the most is {Call from the Nest}.

Normally, we can locate each other through proximity, but if a member of the hive leaves the area affected by my Link, the connection starts to weaken.

That is what happened with Ciel.

He is so far away now that I can no longer tell his direction. I only know he is alive because of the thread that still connects us.

But that is something unique to me. My children cannot feel the Link in such a subtle way unless one of them has a specific focus on manipulating it.

So {Call from the Nest} makes that distance limitation irrelevant for Matt.

It seems he could be anywhere in the world, and he would still know the way home.

“How are you feeling, dear?” I ask, helping him sit up.

In terms of height, he is a little shorter than Ken, and thinner as well.

At least, that is if we measure from the top of his head to his feet.

His antennae are so big.

They look almost half the size of his body.

“Ugh…” Matt grimaces as the [Nurses] continue cleaning him. “I feel nauseous… But other than that, nothing seems wrong.”

“Mm-hm. Congratulations on your progress, Matt.” I smile at him. “Honestly, out of everyone, I didn’t expect you to progress this fast.”

“Hey!” he huffs, puffing out his cheeks.

It makes him look ridiculously adorable.

I almost want to pinch them.

“Hehe. I’m only teasing, dear.” I rub his head gently. “I know you worked hard for this. Rest.”

Small moments like this are the ones I value most lately.

I am trying.

Really trying.

Trying to move past the sadness. Trying not to let it influence me. Trying to keep my hands steady, my voice gentle, and my smile believable.

But it is difficult to bury something that still hurts.

Still, I will not give up.

They need me.

And I will not let my precious babies die meaningless deaths because of my incompetence.

I won’t.