Liam’s tears in the attic were more than fear; they were a warning James had ignored for too long. The vibration in the walls, the low mechanical hum, the way the house seemed to pulse on quiet nights—he had written it off as old pipes and bad wiring. Now, face to face with a living engine of hornets, he realized how close they had come to disaster.

As the smoke dulled the swarm and the papery cells broke away, something unnatural appeared: a small, rusted metal box, webbed into the structure of the nest as if the insects had been guarding it. Inside lay a handful of brittle photographs of strangers in the same attic, decades earlier, and a yellowed note mentioning “the colony above.” James felt the house shift from familiar to foreign. The hornets would die off with winter. The questions they left behind would not.