Not with a push or a warning, but with a subtle release. A pressure easing that I don’t realize was there until my lungs expand without resistance. We exit the control room, and the aperture behind us seals with a soft, final sound. It lights the path out; we follow in silence. Rakkh stays at my back, one hand maintaining a constant thread of contact.
A door opens, and suddenly there is sky again. Wind. Sand. The desert, wide and merciless and achingly familiar. I step out onto the dune and stop. The air feels different here.
Not cooler exactly, definitely not cleaner, but lighter. As if something heavy has been lifted off the world and the atmosphere hasn’t adjusted yet. I draw in a breath, slow and cautious. There is no metallic tang. No ache behind my eyes. Just air—dry, harsh desert air, but honest.
Rakkh pauses too. His attention is like heat at my back, alert and measuring. Travnyk steps down from the ship’s shadow, scans the horizon, then kneels to press two fingers into the sand.Tomas lingers at the threshold, staring out at the dunes like he’s afraid they might reject him.
“Okay,” Tomas says finally, voice low and uncertain. “That’s… different.”
“Yes,” I murmur.
The desert hasn’t healed. That will take time for the ecology to rebound. Blackened plant husks still claw at the sand, their leaves brittle and curled. Patches of soil remain darkened, poisoned, wrong. Nothing has miraculously revived. But I know now that nothing is actively dying either.
I watch a thin tendril of sand slide off a dead root and realize it isn’t smoking anymore. No faint shimmer of discharge creeps outward. No new scars spread across the ground. The damage has stopped.
Travnyk straightens slowly. “Environmental degradation has stabilized.”
Tomas exhales, long and shaky, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“So… we didn’t just doom the planet by touching the wrong thing?” he asks.
“No,” I say softly. “It is stopped.”
The ship looms behind us, half-emerged from the sand, its hull catching the sunlight in muted bands of metal and shadow. It looks different out here now. Less like a wound in the desert. More like something poised, waiting.
Rakkh steps closer, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. He doesn’t pull me back or move in front of me. Hejust stands there, solid and present, his body angled toward the horizon instead of the ship.
“The land is no longer screaming,” he says quietly.
I swallow. “No.”
The ship remains contained and patient, as if honoring the boundary between explanation and consequence. What comes next will happen soon. The ship’s hum continues. The sand vibrates in response. Specks dance around in time with the low vibration.
I curl my fingers into the fabric at my side, grounding myself in the feel of the wind against my skin, the vastness of the desert stretching endlessly in every direction. We’re out. And Tajss, scarred and battered but still breathing, is here with us.
The desert stretches out around us, wide and quiet and brutally honest. Wind skims the dunes in low whispers. The sky is a flat, endless blue that makes everything beneath it feel small. I stand there breathing, really breathing, letting the absence of pressure sink into my bones.
We did it.
The ship’s hum builds, steady and contained, not demanding attention. At least not yet. It’s cycling through whatever prelaunch procedures it must complete. Something ancient must feel the change. The disturbance. The claim being withdrawn.
Rakkh stays close—not crowding me, not hovering, just there. His hand brushes my elbow when the wind gusts harder, grounding without comment. I lean into the moment, into the simple miracle of surviving.
“That’s… unsettling,” Tomas murmurs after a while.
I glance at him. “The quiet?”
“The fact that I don’t feel like my head’s about to split open anymore,” he says. “I don’t trust it.”
“Caution is reasonable. Resolution does not imply completion,” Travnyk says, straightening from where he’s been studying the sand.
I open my mouth to respond when the ground vibrates beneath my feet. It’s not sharp or violent. A low, rolling tremor passes through the dune beneath my feet, subtle enough that for an instant I wonder if I imagined it. Then it comes again, stronger, rippling outward like something enormous shifting its weight beneath the sand.
Rakkh stiffens. His wings draw in tight, muscles locking beneath his scales. His gaze snaps to the horizon, scanning with predatory focus.
“Move closer,” he says quietly.
My stomach tightens. “Rakkh?—”
