“We need to find the rest. If this is only one piece?—”
“I do not think it is a piece,” Travnyk says, stepping back. “It is the edge.”
“The edge of what?” Tomas asks.
Rakkh rises to his full height, eyes fixed on the dune ahead.
“A structure.”
I look again. Really look.
The dune in front of us isn’t shaped like the others. Its slope is too smooth. Too uniform. And near the crest—barely visiblebeneath the rippling sand—lies another curve of metal, faintly gleaming.
“Oh stars,” I breathe. “It’s buried.”
Travnyk nods once. “A crash does not always scatter. Sometimes it sinks.”
A buried ship. Or something worse.
My heart slams against my ribs. Rakkh steps closer, his presence settling around me like armor.
“We must move carefully,” he says. “If that creature was defending this place, more may be bound to it.”
“We found the source, right?” Tomas squeaks. “Doesn’t that mean… are we still going?”
I turn to face him. My hands shake, but my voice doesn’t.
“How many times do I need to say it for you to understand, Tomas? If we don’t figure out what crashed here, the sickness will keep spreading. More creatures will mutate. More plants will die. More predators will rise. And very soon, there will be nothing left for us to eat.”
Tomas goes pale. “I hate when you make sense.”
Rakkh almost smiles. Almost.
He gestures toward the dune. “We approach from the side. Quietly. No sudden steps.”
Travnyk nods, already shifting his weight to minimize sand movement. I follow Rakkh’s steps exactly, his footprints deep enough for my boots to sink into.
Halfway up the dune, the ground trembles. Not violently. Not like a beast lunging. More like a heartbeat. My breath freezes.
“Did you feel that?”
Rakkh snaps into a defensive stance, wings flaring slightly.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “And so did the desert.”
The sand around us seems to exhale, like shifting lungs. Tomas lets out a strangled sound.
“Nope. No. Absolutely not. We are walking on something. Something alive.”
“Not alive,” Travnyk says, lifting his chin. “But waking.”
The tremor comes again—stronger this time. Deep. Resonant. Too rhythmic to be random.
“The metal. The creatures. The rot. It’s all connected,” I say, swallowing hard.
Rakkh curls his tail around the backs of my legs, protective and instinctive as it brushes my knees. My breath catches at the touch.
“Lia,” he murmurs, his voice thick. “Stay close.”
