“I’m not going anywhere.”
A third tremor shakes the sand—sharper now, sending the dune shifting. Travnyk leaps back. Tomas stumbles forward with a yelp. Rakkh grabs my arm and yanks me against him as the ground drops several inches beneath our feet.
A low rumble echoes from below. Not a creature. Not wind. Metal. Yawning open after centuries. The buried structure is waking.
Rakkh’s breath brushes my ear, warm and steady even as the dune vibrates beneath us.
“We should not be standing on this,” he whispers.
“No,” I breathe. “We shouldn’t.”
But we can’t turn back now. Not when the ground itself is telling us we’re close.
Too close.
10
RAKKH
The dune should not be moving like this.
Sand flows. It slides, shifts, and changes with the wind, but it does not move in rhythm. It does not pulse. It does not breathe like the chest of a sleeping beast does. But beneath my feet—beneath hers—the desert heaves.
“Back!” I bark, instinct overriding thought itself.
My arm closes around Lia’s waist, lifting her clear of the collapsing slope. She gasps, arms flying around my shoulders as the dune dips another impossible inch. Travnyk leaps to higher ground. Tomas drops onto all fours and scrambles like a panicked child—but he lives.
Lia is warm in my arms. Her heart beats against my chest like a trapped bird. I set her down only when I find ground that holds weight. She steadies herself, but her fingers linger on my forearm—tight, desperate, trusting. It almost undoes me entirely.
A deep rumble rolls beneath us. Not the roar of a guardian or the sound of a burrower tunneling. This is metal. Old metal. Shifting. The dune bulges as if exhaling dust, then sinks hard.
“What is happening?” Tomas squeaks, voice cracking.
“The structure moves,” Travnyk says, tusks angled in warning. “It wakes.”
I do not like this—not the scent of the place, or the way the sand trembles beneath Lia’s feet as though reaching for her. The dune shudders one more time, and part of it collapses.
Sand pours downward like water disappearing through a broken drain, revealing a curve of dark metal thirty times larger than the piece she’d touched earlier. An entire wall of it.
Lia steps forward, breath catching. Her hair blows across her face in a gust of hot wind, and her eyes—stars save me—glow with something between fear and awe.
“It’s a ship,” she whispers. “Or… some kind of vessel.”
“Yes.” Travnyk kneels, brushing sand from the exposed surface. “This structure, it looks… grown, not forged.”
My stomach tightens. “Grown?”
“Organic metal,” he murmurs softly.
Lia crouches beside him, too close to the opening. Too close to the unknown. I move behind her on instinct alone, my body casting a protective shadow over her.
“Rakkh,” she says softly, without looking back. “It’s the same alloy.”
“Then step away.” My voice comes out harsher than I intend. I force it lower. “Please.”
Her breath stutters, but she doesn’t move.
“There’s something beneath it,” she whispers. “Look—the sand is sliding into that opening.”
