When we crest the next rise, the smell hits hard. Rot. Sharp and chemical. Off in a way that sits in the back of my throat like swallowed metal. I follow it to a patch of low, spiny bushes—native, hardy, supposed to survive anything. Except whatever this is.
I approach and crouch close to them. Rakkh lowers with me, his shadow folding over mine. Tomas stays several steps back, shifting uneasily. Travnyk sinks into a silent crouch beside us, tusks glinting as he inhales.
This plant is worse than the one from before. Its stems are black, the leaves shriveled and pitted as though dissolved from within. The tiny, misshapen fruit droops in a way that makes my stomach turn.
“This is spreading fast,” I whisper.
Rakkh does not look at the plant. He looks at me.
“I trust your judgment.” His voice is gravel and heat, low and sure enough to steal my breath.
Tomas snorts. “Maybe it’s just a fungus. Tajss has weird?—”
“It is poison,” Rakkh says without turning his head.
No hesitation or doubt. Tomas shuts up so fast I hear his teeth click. Rakkh turns back to the plant.
“Show me,” he says.
I swallow and steady my hands.
“See here?” I touch the underside of a leaf. “These burns—Tajss plants do not react like this to heat or dehydration. This is chemical. Foreign.”
“Not Urr’ki. Not Zmaj. Something else,” Travnyk says, leaning in.
“It has to be something synthetic,” I murmur. “Infecting the ground.”
Rakkh’s shoulders flex at that word. He glances at me—sharp, protective—and a strange warmth curls low in my belly, tightening under my ribs. It is ridiculous, inappropriate, and impossible to ignore.
“We should move before the stalker returns,” Rakkh says. “Show the next path.”
I stand, brushing grit from my palms. The wind shifts, tugging my hair into my mouth. Something in the dunes groansunderneath the sand—a long, slow drag that makes my knees go loose. Rakkh’s tail snaps once behind him, sharp as a warning.
“Stay close.”
I do. Not because he orders it. Not because I am afraid. Because with the dunes whispering danger and poison spreading through the land, his presence steadies me more than I want to admit.
And because Tajss is changing around us—rotting from within—and if I am going to track the sickness to its source… I want him there beside me. Even if I do not dare say why.
The deeper we move into the dunes, the more the air tastes wrong. Tajss always carries heat, dust, mineral grit, but tonight there is something sharp underneath it. A bitter chemical smell, like scorched metal mixed with spoiled fruit.
Rakkh feels it too. His wings occasionally twitch, a silent tell. Each time they shift, a faint rush of air brushes my arm or shoulder, and I try to pretend I do not like the way it feels.
We crest another dune. At first the ground beyond looks empty. More pale sand, ridged by wind. Then I see it. A lump near the base of the slope. Too still and too round. My stomach drops.
“Rakkh,” I whisper.
He has already seen it. He steps in front of me without thought, muscles tightening in the moonlight. Travnyk and Tomas spread out behind us, forming a loose triangle. We approach slowly.
The thing in the sand is a desert carok. A burrowing creature with six legs and a hide tough enough to stop a Zmaj blade. Usually fast and ill-tempered. This one, though, is not moving.
Its skin is mottled black. The same black as the vines. It lies sprawled sideways, mouth open in a silent, twisted gape. A low, wet wheeze rattles from its throat.
“Oh no,” I breathe, dropping to my knees beside it.
The carok jerks weakly, as though trying to burrow away but too weak to dig. Rakkh crouches beside me, one massive hand bracing the creature’s flank to keep it from hurting itself.
“Careful,” he warns softly, but I am already reaching.
